The Return of the Black Company

by Glen Cook

  Thai Dei stepped over when nobody else was near. “Grandfather would speak with you. Soon, if possible.” His manners were impeccable. He did not call me Stone Soldier even once.

  The old man must want something badly. “As you wish.” I noticed the outsider Sindhu on the battlements off toward the Western gate. I could feel him watching me. “One-Eye.”

  “What?”

  “You don’t need to bark. If you want to bark I’ll see if I can’t have the Shadowmaster turn you into a dog.”

  One-Eye was startled. “Huh?”

  “You guys keeping an eye on our guest?”

  “Geek and Freak are taking turns. He ain’t done much yet. Wandered around town. Talked to people. Tried visiting with the Taglians, here and over with Mogaba. Ours wouldn’t have anything to do with him. The al-Khul Company ran him off with their swords drawn.”

  “Would anybody talk about him?”

  One-Eye shook his head. “It’s the same old shit. Maybe even worse. You better make it clear him being here wasn’t your idea.”

  Thai Dei, listening, murmured something that sounded cabalistic. He followed with a gesture resembling that meant to avert the evil eye.

  “Hey,” One-Eye said. “Something can bother these guys after all.”

  “I’m going to go listen to their boss talk. You’re in charge, but only because everybody else around here is less trustworthy than you.”

  “Thanks a shitload, Kid. You make a guy feel like he’s on top of the world.”

  “Try to have something left when I get back.”

  48

  The vertigo hit me in the same alleyway as before—just yesterday? I remembered it as the darkness closed in. This was more of a sneaking, gentle, enveloping blackness than the thunderbolts that got me before.

  My thoughts scrambled but I did recall several minimal episodes since the big blackout, just moments when I was out of my head and I came back as soon as somebody said something.

  This one was stronger. Thai Dei’s hands closed on my left bicep. He spoke but his words were sounds that had no meaning. The light faded. My knees went watery. Then there was no sensation at all.

  * * *

  There was a place that was brighter than day, although it was daytime. Huge mirrors gathered sunlight and splashed it onto one tall, gaunt individual in black. The gaunt man stood upon a windswept parapet high above a darkening land.

  A scream ripped through the air. A dark rectangle slanted toward the tower from high above and far away.

  The gaunt figure fitted a stylized mask to its face. Its breathing increased pace, as though it needed more air to face visitors.

  Another scream tore the air.

  The gaunt man muttered, “Someday…!”

  The ragged flying carpet settled a short distance away. The masked man remained motionless, glaring at every hint of shadow around the device. The wind tugged at his robe.

  Three persons rode the flying carpet. One was a tiny thing bundled in dark, stinking rags crumbling with mildew. He was masked, too, and shook continuously. He could not control the occasional scream. He was the Howler, one of the world’s oldest and most wicked sorcerers. The carpet was his creation. The gaunt man hated him.

  The gaunt man hated everybody. He had little love for himself. He mastered his hatreds for short periods only, entirely through the implacable exercise of will. He had a powerful will—as long as he was not threatened physically.

  The ragball gurgled as it stifled a scream.

  Howler’s nearest companion was a short, skinny, filthy little man in a ragged loincloth and grubby turban. He was frightened. His name was Narayan Singh, living saint of the Deceiver cult, alive only because of Howler’s intercession.

  Longshadow considered Singh less than a flop of buffalo dung. Nevertheless, he had potential as a tool. The reach of his cult was long and lethal.

  Singh’s opinion of his own new ally was of no supreme elevation, either.

  Beyond Singh was a child, a pretty little thing, though filthier than the jamadar. She had huge brown eyes. Eyes like the windows of hell. Eyes that knew all evil of old and would revel in it now and forever more.

  Those eyes troubled even Longshadow.

  They were whirlpools of darkness that pulled, pulled, twisted, hypnotized.…

  * * *

  A sudden, sharp pain in my left knee sent wires of agony searing through my flesh. I groaned. I shook my head. The stink of an alleyway penetrated my awareness. I seemed blind. But my eyes, apparently, were adapted to brilliant sunlight. Hands gripped my left arm, pulling, lifting. My vision began to return. I looked up.

  A gaunt face looked back, startling me. I retained a legacy of fear from my vision, though what that had been was fading already. I tried to hang on but the pain in my knee and Thai Dei talking shattered my concentration.

  “I’m all right,” I said. “Just hurt my knee.” I tried to stand. When I took a step the knee almost folded. “I’ll manage, damn it!” I pushed his hands away.

  The vision was gone except for a memory that it had happened.

  Had it been the same with my other blackouts? Were there visions that flew away so thoroughly that I could not recall having had them? Did they have any connection with reality? Vaguely, I recalled seeing lots of familiar faces.

  I would discuss it with Goblin and One-Eye. They ought to know what to make of it. They picked up a little loose change interpreting dreams.

  Thai Dei started gabbling the moment we entered the Speaker’s presence. Ky Dam considered me speculatively, his expression deepening oddly as Thai Dei chattered.

  The old man appeared to be alone when we walked in but as Thai Dei talked and Ky Dam became unusually attentive other Nyueng Bao came out of the shadows to study me. Hong Tray and Ky Gota were the first. The old woman settled by her husband. Ky Dam said, “I hope you do not mind. Sometimes she is able to part the veil of time.”

  Gota said nothing. I suspected that that was unusual.

  The beautiful woman appeared. She got right onto the tea service business. Tea is a big thing with the Nyueng Bao. Did she serve any other function in the family?

  The guy in the shadows wasn’t moaning and groaning today. Had he left us?

  “Not yet,” the Speaker said, reading my glance. “But soon.” Again, he sensed a question. “We sustain our share of the marriage vow even though he betrayed his. We will stand before the Judges of Time without stain on our karma.”

  I had a notion what he meant only because I was studying the Jaicuri scriptures. “You are a good people.”

  Ky Dam was amused. “Some might argue. We do strive to be an honorable folk.”

  “I understand.” We so strive in the Black Company.

  “Excellent.”

  “I came because Thai Dei said you want to talk.”

  “I did.”

  I waited. My gaze kept straying to the woman making tea.

  “Standardbearer.”

  I started … “No,” I said softly, unaware that I was speaking aloud. I had not fallen into one of those black fugues. I’d just become distracted momentarily. Couldn’t blame a man for that. Not with a woman like that to distract him.

  I said, “Thank you, Speaker. For not labelling me with one of those unappealing names you tend to employ.”

  I could not resist a small smile that told him I knew he wanted something badly enough to keep me in a generous mood.

  He nodded in turn, acknowledging my awareness.

  Damn. I was turning into an old man myself. Maybe we could sit here grinning and grunting and nodding and arrange the whole future of the world. “Thank you,” I said when the pretty woman presented my tea.

  That surprised her. She looked me in the eye for a moment, startling me. Her eyes were green. She neither smiled nor acknowledged me in any other way.

  “Remarkable,” I said, to nobody in particular. “Green eyes.” Then I controlled myself and waited while the Speaker sipped some tea before he
started circling in on his problem.

  He told me, “Green eyes are rare and greatly admired among Nyueng Bao.” He took a ritual sip. “Hong Tray may part the veil occasionally but her visions are not always true, or not always fixed. Or they may be visions that have not yet come to pass. She does not see recognizable people so it is hard to determine when the visions might be taking place.”

  “Uhm?” The woman in question sat with eyes downcast, slowly turning a jade bracelet that hung loose upon her left wrist. Her eyes were green, too.

  “She foresaw the flood. We believed that would prove to be a false vision because we could imagine no way so much water could be brought to Jaicur.”

  “But we’re in the middle of a lake now. The world’s widest moat. The Shadowlanders won’t bother us anymore.”

  It took the old man a minute to understand that I was not serious. “Oh.” He chuckled. Hong Tray looked up and smiled. She had gotten the joke first. “I see. Yes. But it will serve the Shadowmaster, not us. Any attempt to leave will require rafts or boats, easily spotted, which cannot move enough men to force a breakthrough.”

  The old boy was a general, too.

  “You got it.” Shadowspinner had found an ingenious solution to his manpower problem. Now he could challenge Lady confident that we would not jump on his back.

  “The reason I wished to confer is that in her vision Hong Tray saw the water rise to within ten feet of the battlements.”

  “That would make seventy feet of water.” I glanced at the old woman. She seemed to be studying me in a way that had nothing to do with curiosity. “That’s a shitload.”

  “There is another problem.”

  “Which is?”

  “We tried to calculate how many structures will rise above the waterline.”

  “Oh-oh. I see.” I saw. Dejagore enjoyed a vertically oriented architecture, as walled cities do, but not many buildings overtopped the wall. And most surviving structures, even many that were partially burned, were occupied by someone. There would not be much housing available if the city flooded.

  Luckily for us Old Crew our quarter boasted a lot of tall tenements.

  “Oh-oh indeed. In this area there are enough such structures to house our few pilgrims. But elsewhere it will go hard for the Jaicuri when the black men and their soldiers finally understand how much space they will need.”

  “No doubt.” I thought a moment. Hell. People could camp out on the wall. Them getting in the way would not be a problem militarily.

  Still, whatever we did, life would become pure hell if the water rose that high. “Presents a dilemma, doesn’t it?”

  “Possibly a larger dilemma than you suspect.”

  “How so?”

  “If preparations are not initiated immediately much that might prove useful will be lost. But if you tell Mogaba this then it is likely the strong will rob the weak and leave them to suffer. There is now no need to exercise restraint because of potential attack.”

  “I see.” Actually, I had foreseen the scramble for stores and high ground. But I did overlook the fact that Shadowspinner extricating himself also freed Mogaba to manage internal frictions in a manner more to his liking. “You have something in mind?”

  “I wish to examine the possibility of a temporary alliance. Until Jaicur is relieved.”

  “Has Hong Tray foreseen that as well?”

  “No.”

  I was surprised by the black despair that collapsed upon me.

  “She has seen nothing one way or the other.”

  I brightened. A very little.

  “I am reluctant to undertake such an obligation,” Ky Dam confessed. “It was not my idea. It was Sahra’s.” He indicated the beautiful tea server. “But she trusts you for no reason she will explain and, moreover, her arguments make sense.”

  Hong Tray wore a bemused expression. There was, in the way she looked at me, a hint that she foresaw much that she did not share.

  I shivered.

  Ky Dam continued, “We have no hope if we assume a traditional Nyueng Bao stance and depend upon ourselves alone. You have little hope if your Mogaba does not feel he needs your arms anymore.”

  I stared at the beautiful one, though that was bad manners. She blushed. The attraction was so powerful, suddenly, that I gasped. I felt as though I had known her several lifetimes already.

  What the…? This did not happen to me. Not anymore, anyway. I was no sixteen-year-old.… Hell, I never felt like this when I was sixteen.

  My soul was trying to tell me I knew this woman as well as a man ever knew any woman when, in truth, I had only just heard her name spoken for the first time.

  There was something else over there, with her. That was more than one lovely daydream. I knew another one just like her, somewhen else.…

  The darkness came.

  It was sudden and absolute and I had no time to decide if I was running away or being pulled down.

  49

  There was a long, long time in the dreamless dark. A time without an I. A time neither warm nor cold, a time with no happiness or fear or pain in a place no tortured soul would want to leave. But a pin pricked a hole in the envelope. The tiniest thread of light found its way in and fell upon an imaginary eye.

  Movement.

  A rush toward a point, which swelled and became a passageway into a world of time and matter and pain.

  I knew who I was. I staggered under the crushing weight of a host of congruent memories surfacing all at once.

  A Voice spoke to me but I could not comprehend its words. I floated like gossamer through golden caverns where old men sat beside the way, frozen in time, immortal but unable to move an eyelid. Madmen, they, some were covered with fairy webs of ice as though a thousand winter spiders had spun threads of frozen water. Above, an enchanted forest of icicles grew downward from the cavern ceiling.

  Because I had memories of memories within memories I recalled having read words very much like those somewhere in something I did not believe had yet been written.

  “Come!”

  The power of the call was like the punch of a thunderbolt.

  Darkness came. I tumbled away, ceased being I. Nevertheless, before I faded from that cavern I sensed a startled presence coming alert and striving to direct its attention my way.

  Somehow I had gone somewhere where no mortal was welcome to travel and still come away.

  Memory fled. But pain went along on the journey.

  50

  Light in the darkness, again. I began to be I, though without a name. I shied from the light. The light was not a pleasant place. The pain would be waiting. But something farther beneath my surface turned to the light like a drowning man fighting toward lifesaving air.

  I became aware that I was flesh. I felt my muscles, tightened till some were cramped. My throat was painfully dry. I tried to talk. “Speaker…” I rasped.

  Someone stirred but no one replied.

  I was slumped in a chair.

  The Nyueng Bao had no furniture in their place, which was little more than an animal den. Had they returned me to my own people?

  I forced an eye open.

  What the hell? What was this place? A dungeon? A torture chamber? Had Mogaba snatched me? There was a skinny little Taglian over there, tied into a chair just like mine, and another man was strapped onto a table.

  That was Smoke, the Taglian royal wizard!

  I levered myself up. That hurt. A lot. The prisoner in the chair watched me warily.

  “Where am I?” I asked.

  His wariness redoubled. His lips pursed. He said nothing. I looked around. I was in a dusty, almost barren chamber—but the nature of the stone answered my question. I was in Taglios. This was the Royal Palace. There is no stone like this stone anywhere else.

  How?

  Ever seen paint run down a wall? That is what happened to reality. Right in front of my eyes it ran and dribbled and streaked. The man in the chair squeaked. He shook. I have no idea what he th
ought he saw. But reality drifted away and I was in a grey place, confused, filled with memories of things never experienced or seen. Then the confusion began to sort itself out and the grey washed away and in a short time I was in a room somewhere in the Palace at Trogo Taglios. Smoke lay on his table breathing slowly and shallowly as always. The Deceiver was in his seat. He earned a narrow-eyed glare because of the way he was sweating. What was he up to now?

  His eyes bugged. What did he see when he looked at me?

  I rose, aware that I had to be recovering from one of my spells. But there was no one here who could have brought me back. Didn’t it take Croaker or One-Eye to drag me up out of the depths of darkness?

  Hints of memory stirred in the deeps of my mind. I snatched at them, tried desperately to hang on. Something in a cavern. A song of shadow. Waking up once in a past long ago but still only a moment earlier in this time.

  I was weak. This business was debilitating. And thirst was becoming a rage within me.

  I could do something about that. A pitcher and metal cup stood on the table beside Smoke’s head. Beneath the cup I found a scrap of paper torn from a larger sheet. It carried a message in Croaker’s tight script. No time to coddle you now, Murgen. If you wake up on your own drink this water. There is food in the box. One-Eye or I will be back as soon as possible.

  The scrap might have come from a procurement request. The Old Man hates to waste any fragment of blank paper. Paper is too damned dear.

  I checked the tin box on the other side of Smoke’s head. It was filled with heavy, unleavened cakes of the sort my mother-in-law bakes despite all pleas to desist. In fact, on closer examination, I knew no one else could have baked them. If I survived here I would owe Croaker a swift kick in the slats.

  P.S. Check the Strangler’s bonds. He nearly got away once already.

  So that was what he was doing when I woke up. He wanted to worm out so he could murder me and my pal Smoke and then make a run for it.

  I drank from the pitcher. The Deceiver looked at me with a longing you could almost smell. “Want a sip?” I asked. “Just tell me what’s going on.”