Singh seemed unsure how to approach the girl. He seemed unsure about a lot lately. He was close to superfluous and knew it.
Lady always would have a use for him, though.
He got the girl's attention. Gods, she was getting spooky! There was an aura about her, something you might call a glow of darkness. In that light her eyes seemed to shimmer like those of a big cat stealing toward your dying campfire. You were drowsing and she was hungry.
"It's time," Narayan told her, his whisper barely strong enough to stir the air.
The child nodded curtly. She made a tiny gesture. Narayan bowed, backed away.
There was no doubt who was in charge here, who ruled and who obeyed. Nor any doubt that she was herself controlled by a determined power. She extended her writing hand to Narayan for help rising. It was a claw she could not relax. Her legs were too stiff to unfold on their own. For a moment I pitied her, forgetting she was no true child.
Howler returned to the corridor. He drifted along ahead of Singh and the girl, scouting. Those two insisted on a lamp, which troubled Howler deeply. He muttered and fussed the whole time they were doing their sneak.
By a tortuous route that avoided Longshadow, the garrison and the enclave still held by Lady's soldiers, Howler led them to an unguarded piece of wall overlooking Kiaulune. Fires were burning down there. I was down there with Thai Dei, cold and disappointed with myself for having been dumb enough to insist on the eyewitness view.
I did not tag along in real time. I skipped forward, compressing events. Howler's destination was a small carpet concealed atop a domeless tower otherwise not in use. It was a new carpet, smaller than those we had seen before, black as the night around us. More evidence that you cannot know everything that is happening unless you want to spend every minute watching. I had not seen Howler working on this carpet.
With no words exchanged the three lifted it, walked to the edge of the parapet, lockstepped right off into space. They clambered aboard as they fell. Narayan moaned softly, eyes closed. The Daughter of Night was not impressed.
Howler took control in time not to smear them all over the rocks and wreckage below. He began sliding gently along just a few feet above the ground, trying to keep solid objects between himself and Overlook.
I took a quick look at Longshadow.
The Shadowmaster was restless. He had left his studies to stare vaguely toward Kiaulune. He sensed that something was happening but could not determine what.
Howler was playing around behind his ally's back.
I almost lost the little shit. I had to go back to the moment I left him to pick him up again. Soon afterward he drifted past a band of Mogaba's guerrillas in the ruins. The guerrillas did not see him but sensed him and panicked, thinking one of the Shadowmaster's pets was on the prowl. The racket they made drew the attention of nearby Taglians. The soldiers saw something shadowy drifting through the darkness. They wasted no time getting off a volley of fireballs.
Howler changed tactics.
He put on a burst of speed and employed a spell of concealment neither of which he wanted to do that near Overlook. I would have lost him then had not chance favored me.
A wild fireball clipped the corner of the invisible carpet, which began to smolder. The spell of concealment did not include the glow as long as I stayed close.
Howler hauled ass. But he did stay so low that brush scraped the underside of his carpet. At one point he ploughed through some tents and clotheslines in one of the Prahbrindrah Drah's division camps. He was less concerned about being noticed by our side than by his own.
The race brought on a mild sense of exhilaration. I did not notice it immediately. Then it hit me that I was feeling more emotion than usual. Eventually I realized what I was feeling was some feeble spillover from Smoke.
Sometime during the flight we passed close enough to Uncle Doj and Mother Gota to be noticed but I saw no sign of them. We also swept over my own headquarters close enough to startle the sentries and horses.
I was not entirely surprised when Howler headed for a certain snow-choked canyon. Smoke did not notice until we were close enough to watch Howler land in front of a waiting Soulcatcher amidst an explosion of terrified crows.
In my amusement at the birds I relaxed just a little bit. And Smoke rebelled. She is the darkness.
What?
That was not me. But it did not happen again.
I backed out and up and away, content to go back to my flesh with the knowledge that Howler and Soulcatcher were up to some treachery that included Narayan Singh and the Daughter of Night.
The mood Smoke exuded now, if so feeble a thing could be called a mood, was terror.
And terror was out there roving the night, though it was not the terror that haunted my spirit steed.
I caught a whiff of corruption as I moved toward my flesh. I saw nothing. I stopped, experimented, moved in a direction away from the invisible source.
Maybe it caught a whiff of me. The stench grew stronger suddenly. I felt a sensation as of something onrushing. Light flickered in the ghostworld. I saw Kina's hideous face for an instant, looking directly toward me. But her eyes were blind. Her nostrils flared as though she was trying to catch my wind.
Smoke's terror might have been what she smelled. He fled in total panic. She is the darkness.
It was more feeble this time but it was there. It was not my imagination.
54
The Old Man did not seem surprised to hear that Soulcatcher might be up to something with Howler. "I wasn't counting on it but it seemed like a possibility," he said. "They've worked together for ages. We may have Longshadow by the nuts."
"Somebody better have him by something if he controls the Shadowgate. The other thing is... " How could I put it?
"Other thing?"
"Smoke is showing signs of personality. I think." I told him what had happened.
"Damn! We don't want him waking up now." He thought for a while. "I don't see how we can stop it if it's happening."
"Better see One-Eye about that."
"Send him over. Wait! Don't leave. Tell me about the part of the fortress where Singh and the girl hide out."
It turned out this was more than a passing interest. He wanted maps.
I had that part of the place charted already. All I had to do was get the drawings from One-Eye's dugout. I brought the little wizard along. He kept grumbling about being wakened in the middle of the night. Once the Old Man had what he needed I shut the curtain to Smoke's alcove and went off to bed, leaving them to their schemes.
I did not escape Kina just by getting back to my flesh. She was waiting in my dreams. No sooner did I lie down than I found myself in the place of bones. Sahra was waiting.
I had no trouble recalling that she was an illusion. She looked nothing like the Sahra who lived so miserably at the Vinh Gao Ghang temple. This one was too young, too unworn, despite her pallor and the neck crook characteristic of a Deceiver victim.
I had begun to suspect that Kina was slow and unimaginative, although extremely powerful. How had she gotten the angle on Lady?
It was true Lady had not known what she was up against. And ignorance is a chink in the armor a knowledgeable enemy can exploit at will. And, of course, Kina was Queen of the Deceivers.
It no longer mattered how Kina had fooled Lady. What mattered now was that she did not fool me.
That thought left me unable to pretend that I was being deceived. I was not kind to the false Sahra.
Her flesh corrupted and melted right before me. The perfume of Kina, which was the stink of dead bodies, assailed me. A shadow in the grey distance coagulated into a four armed black dancer a hundred feet tall whose pounding feet threw up clouds of bone dust as she stamped and whirled. Her fangs dripped venom. Her eyes burned like dark coals. Her jewelry of bones clattered and rattled. Her breath was the breath of disease.