I gripped Smoke’s hand, blanked my mind, spoke careful instructions in a whisper. And away I went, out of my body, so suddenly I almost panicked. For a moment I thought I recalled doing all this before. But I could not remember what was going to happen.
The Old Man was right. This was not the same as my unwanted plunges into my own past. In this nightmare I was aware and in control. I was a disembodied vision racing toward Bond but my mission remained clear in my mind. That was a big distinction. When I floated over Dejagore I lacked identity and control till I merged with my self of the past. Then I forgot the future.
Bond is a hamlet on the south bank of the River Main, facing the Vehdna-Bota ford. For centuries the Main has been the traditional boundary of the Taglian heartland. The peoples who live below the river share the languages and religions of Taglios but are considered only tributary cousins by the Taglians themselves.
The nonagrarian part of Bond’s economy revolved around a small remount station for the military courier post. A minimal garrison of Shadar cavalrymen managed the station and kept watch on ford traffic. Bond was the kind of duty soldiers dream about. There were no officers and very little work. The river was low enough to ford only about three months a year. But the garrison got paid all year round.
Smoke’s soul slipped back to that long ago disaster. I stayed with him, carrying a load of fear despite all of Croaker’s reassurances.
It was very dark that night in that Bond gone by. Horror stalked out of the night and those nightmares where men are more often prey than predator. A monster padded through the hamlet, headed toward the army stable. I watched from a place where I could offer no warning.
One solitary soldier had the watch. He was nodding. Neither he nor the horses sensed their danger, The latch rose inside the stable door. No animal mind knew enough to pull a string. The soldier started awake just in time to see a dark shape with scarlet eyes hurtling toward him.
The monster fed, then padded into the night. It killed again. Screams wakened the garrison. The soldiers seized their arms. The monster, like an oversize black panther, loped to the river, swam to the northern shore.
I knew something now. The killer was a shapeshifter, the acolyte of the sorcerer Shapeshifter, whom we had destroyed the night we captured Dejagore. She got away, trapped in the animal shape.
Why just this one incident in more than four years?
I wanted to follow the panther, to discover what had become of it, but Smoke could not be coaxed to go. The comatose wizard had no will or ego I could detect but, apparently, he did have limits or constraints.
Funny, though. I felt no real emotion until I returned to the reality of the Palace. Then it hit me in a wave, hard, leaving me breathless. I asked, “Is whatever I see out there true?”
“We haven’t seen any evidence otherwise.” Croaker’s caution meant he had reservations. Always suspicious, our Captain. “You look bad. You see something nasty?”
“Very.” One-Eye was gone. And the Strangler had fouled himself. I wrinkled my nose. “I can use Smoke to look anywhere?”
“Almost. Some places he can’t or won’t go. And he can’t go back to any time before he went into the coma. You can catch the Annals up now, eyewitness style, if you will. But always remember to be careful about pointing him right.”
“Wow.” The implications had begun to sink in. “This is worth more than a veteran legion.” Now I knew how we had pulled off some really startling coups lately. If you can perch on your enemy’s shoulder nothing is going to go his way.
“It’s worth a lot more. And that’s why you’re going to keep your mouth shut even around your dearly beloved.”
“Does the Radisha know?”
“No. You, me and One-Eye. Maybe Goblin if One-Eye just had to share it with somebody. And that’s the limit. One-Eye found it by accident when he was trying to pull Smoke out of his coma. Smoke has been to Overlook. He’s walked around inside. He’s actually met Longshadow. We wanted to ask him some questions. We decided they could wait. You don’t tell anybody. Understand?”
“There you go being suspicious of my in-laws again.”
“I’d cut your throat.”
“I get the message, boss. Don’t brag it up to my Deceiver drinking buddies. Shit. This could win us the war.”
“It won’t hurt. As long as it’s secret. I have business with the Radisha. Practice using him. Don’t worry about working him too hard. You can’t.” He squeezed my shoulder, left the room with a stride that seemed both determined and fatalistic. Must be facing another budgetary conference. Depending on whether you were the Liberator or the Radisha the military either never had enough or always wanted too much.
So. There was just me and one halfway-dead wizard and one stinky Strangler under a linen rag. I considered using Smoke to find out what Stinky’s buddies were up to in Taglios but reasoned that the Captain would not have had him interrogated if Smoke had been able to provide useful answers. Maybe you not only had to be precise in your instructions, you had to have some idea what you were seeking. You could not find your own elbow if you could not guess what directions to give to get you there.
The point? Old Smoke was a miracle but he had major limitations. And most of those would exist right inside our own heads. We would become the beneficiaries or victims of our own imaginations.
What should I go see, then?
I was excited now. I was up for an adventure. So, what the hell? Why not go straight for the biggie? How about taking a peek at the Shadowmaster himself, Longshadow, number one boy on the Black Company shit list?
35
Longshadow could have pranced right out of my fantasies. He was a deadly freak. He was tall and thin and twitchy, given to flights of rage and subject to sudden spells resembling malarial shakes. He wore a sort of loose black floor-length chemise that concealed a deathly gauntness. He ate infrequently and then only picked. He could have been a famine victim.
Threads of silver and gold and glistening black, embroidered or woven into his robe, protected him with dozens of static sorceries. At first blush he seemed a hundred times more paranoid than Croaker. But he did have reason. There was just a whole world full of folks who wanted to roast his skinny ass and he had no friends closer than Mogaba and Blade.
The Howler was not a friend. He was an ally.
One of Longshadow’s obsessions was the Black Company. I did not understand. The kind of enemies we were should not have troubled him at all. We were no world-killers.
His face, which he kept masked except when he was alone, was skull-like. His waxy, pallid features were frozen in a permanent expression of fear. There was no guessing his birth race. His eyes were a washed out grey with splotches of pink around the edges but I don’t think he was an albino. I exploited Smoke’s ability, fluttered about through time to find out all the interesting stuff fast. I did not catch Longshadow completely out of costume once. The man did not bathe. He did not change clothing. He wore gloves all the time.
The last of the four Shadowmasters, now the Shadowmaster, he was the unquestioned tyrant of the city Shadowcatch and a demigod within his fortress Overlook. His slightest whim could set a hundred terrors and ten thousand men scrambling to appease him. And still he was a prisoner doing life without hope of parole.
Overlook is, but for one, the southernmost work of Man. I tried pushing past that fortress. Somewhere in the mists beyond Overlook is Khatovar, toward which we have marched for years, lust a glimpse would be marvelous.