"You worried about Goblin? You?"
"Worried? Me? Hell, no. I don't care what happens to the little shit. But if he croaks the Prahbrindrah Drah we're gonna be in shit so deep we'll have to look up to see the horizon."
"I don't think we can get in much deeper than we already are. They can only kill us once. And they've already let us know they intend to try."
One-Eye snorted. No way would he admit that he was worried about Goblin though Goblin's absence obviously made him crazy. He had not been able to feud with anyone for ages. Nobody else would play.
I asked, "Why don't you play a few tricks on Uncle Doj if you're suffering some compulsion to mess with somebody who can mess right back?"
Thai Dei developed a sudden interest in our banter. One-Eye did not cheer up. He did ask, "You figure Lady was right about him? He don't look the part."
"And you do?" Like a derelict in a slum alley does. "You think she's ever been wrong about something like that?"
"She's still healthy," One-Eye grumped.
Thai Dei wanted to know what we were talking about but could see no way to get anything out of us without giving something away himself. If he'd just been the kind who chatters incessantly he could have asked anything and nobody would have thought anything about it.
I chuckled.
Puzzled, One-Eye asked, "You going back over there?"
"Got to. Boss says."
One-Eye glared at the distant plateau. "Damned Tals! Just had to stab us in the back. I was all set to retire as soon as we finished Longshadow. But they just had to fuck me up. And now I got to go on up there. Which I'm looking forward to like I'm looking forward to getting a hot poker shoved up my poop chute. Whoa! Here's my chance." He scampered toward Croaker's dugout.
Lady had come up to the light. She looked more haggard than ever. She must have been walking the ghost for all she was worth. She leaned on a post while she spoke softly to one of the messengers waiting for an assignment. He hurried off toward her camp. She looked at me, frowned as though she was having trouble remembering who I was. Maybe she was. I was supposed to be somewhere else.
I decided to go there even though it was no resort for tired professional soldiers.
84
Mother Gota would not talk to Uncle Doj. Mother Gota would not talk to her darling baby boy. But Mother Gota and silence had been strangers for decades. So Mother Gota talked to me.
She was not happy about the way her life was going, though she refused to get specific in front of a Soldier of Darkness, family or not.
I was in a karma-building cycle, apparently. I endured her crabbing, nodding and grunting in the right places while I made notes concerning recent events. I said, "You could always go home. Just pack up and go back to the swamp. Let Uncle boil his own bitterroot." The root was a recent discovery. Shadowlander fugitives had been caught eating it. It was a common weed that was not completely inedible if you boiled its roots for six or eight hours before you ground them into meal that tasted like soggy white oak sawdust. A lot was getting eaten because there was little else to be found close by. Croaker still had not authorized anyone to begin exploiting Overlook.
Uncle Doj had discovered bitterroot long ago. He had not eaten much else since Charandaprash. How had he found that much time to spend sitting in one place? Maybe he cured twenty pounds of root at a time.
"You, Bone Warrior, you would have me abandon my duty?"
Hell, yes. Anything to get you out of my hair. But I did not say that aloud. I just asked, "What duty is that?"
She opened her mouth to tell me but Nyueng Bao caution took over. She gulped like a fish out of water, then, as always when pressed, told me, "I go get some wood." That in Taglian instead of Nyueng Bao, which was good enough for me as long as I asked no questions.
"Good idea."
Thai Dei came to stand by me as I watched her go. I said, "Soon the Company will return to the road to Khatovar. Your people need to decide what to do when that happens." I reached for a rock.
I thought I made no giveaway motion but the crow was ready. It just hopped over the whistling stone and offered me one mocking caw for my trouble. The black birds remained scarce but there was always one near me and a dozen around Croaker's headquarters. Catcher was lying low but she had not stopped watching.
A nearby Taglian, maybe thinking he could curry favor, aimed a bamboo pole at the crow. "Save that for a shadow!" I snapped. "We're not out of this yet." Interesting. The would-be sniper wore a ragged, crudely drawn Company badge. I saw no one armed with bamboo who did not sport some version of our badge. The management had stopped pretending to be fair.
Red Rudy wandered over, stood leaning on a spear. He stared northward, silently watching something. Nobody else said anything, either. I took advantage of the silence to scribble a few more notes. Finally, Rudy mused, "Ever notice how, when the light is right, you can see where everybody's going over there?"
"No." I looked up.
He was right. Just now the light had every piece of metal beyond Overlook reflecting right at us. And a whole lot of metal was headed up the road I had walked with that useless One-Eye... "Oh, no. Whose bright idea was this?"
Somebody wanted to call on Soulcatcher.
"Thought you'd be interested." Rudy collected his spear and strolled off. Probably to find a deep hole to pull in after him.
"What is happening?" Thai Dei asked.
I shrugged. "Maybe just the end of the world."
Or maybe not. Maybe somebody in the headquarters bunker was playing mind games with her sister.
The sun moved on. Light no longer glimmered off the moving force. Nobody but Rudy seemed to understand what was happening but everybody sensed that something was. It became very quiet on my far hillside.
Nothing happened for a while. I made notes. I watched Mother Gota dwindle into the distance. Looked like she planned to do her wood gleaning farther afield.
Afternoon shadows crept across the far foothills. "That's dark," I said. Especially near where Soulcatcher was last seen. That darkness was swelling...
I gaped. That was no shadow. That was a cloud of darkness. It boiled out of the canyons and forests and masked the foothills...
Crows.
All the crows we had not seen for the past several days!
The darkness rose like a blast from a volcano. It began to spread.
"That's got to be every crow in the world," I breathed. The cloud just kept growing. Part seemed headed my way.
Suddenly, lightning sliced inside it. The wind began to blow. I began to lose track of where and when I was and what I was doing. Somebody asked, "What's happening?"
A second voice asked, "What's that smell?"
Kina. But I could not explain.
More lightnings ripped through the thunderhead of crows. Most of that darkness rushed my way. The stench of Kina became overpowering. There were sounds around me, heard as though from a great distance. They did not include the panic that seemed appropriate.
The darkness bent over and grabbed me, took me up like a mother lifts a frightened infant. The face of Kina was in the darkness but it was not Kina who possessed me. She was angry. Again. She was disoriented.
She was not alone.
Lady was there, maybe riding Smoke, maybe in some other fashion. The lightning was her doing, evidently. She had Kina in one sorcerous hand while trying to spank her sister with the other.
Catcher was there, too. And she seemed amused, not troubled, although she was caught between a devil goddess and a sister who would roast her happily. Soulcatcher would go to the burning stake chuckling at the fire. The woman was completely mad.
The darkness wrapped me up. It devoured me. It tried to chew me up but found me unpalatable. It spit me out.