I staggered like a drunk. A voice in my head said, There you are, darling. I missed you. You have been away too long. Moonlight glinted off the corpse-strewn black water lapping at Dejagore's wall. I imagined something stirring in those waters, something that wanted to grab me and pull me deep into the inky darkness, down amongst the naked bones. I looked to my left and there stood the long-dead Speaker of the Nyueng Bao, Ky Dam. His wife Hong Tray was with him. They smiled. The old woman made a finger sign I knew to be a blessing.
Darkness swallowed me.
Darkness had no stomach for me. It puked me up.
I was in a tree. My eyes saw strangely. I had to turn my head this way and that to see out of one or the other. Men of half a dozen races were slaughtering men of several others below me. The trees were repelled. They loved death but hated the shedding of blood.
I was in the Grove of Doom. In a tree?
I raised a hand to feel my eyes. White feathers blocked my vision.
I lost consciousness.
I went a hundred places. A hundred places came to me. I seemed to visit all times and all places of the past several years.
I was on the plain of bones. Darkness had come. A black wind blew the bones about. I tumbled like a leaf. Crows mocked me from the naked trees. I rolled over into a deeper night and in an instant was strolling up the sloped floor of the tunnel where the old men rested in their cocoons of spun ice.
A great deep booming thundered in my head. It was pain incarnate, yet seemed to carry a message. I tried to listen.
Time expanded to encompass the throbbing within me, which became a slow, deep voice that speeded up until it turned into Thai Dei nagging worriedly in Nyueng Bao. "Standardbearer! Speak to me."
I tried but my jaws would not work. I could do nothing but make inarticulate noises.
"He's all right." That was Uncle Doj. I opened my eyes. Doj knelt beside me, fingers against the side of my neck. "What happened, Bone Warrior?"
I sat up. My muscles were watery. I was drained. But it seemed no time had passed. I volleyed the question back. "What happened over there?" Crows still swarmed in the distance, though not in clouds like I had seen.
"Where?" Thai Dei asked.
"There. Where the birds are."
Thai Dei said. "I do not know. I saw nothing unusual."
"No cloud of darkness? No lightning?"
After a pause, "None that I saw."
Uncle Doj considered the distance thoughtfully.
"I need something to eat." Though I had not been ghost-walking, I was that weak.
The event was troubling.
85
The summons came from Croaker. I went across. Only a few days had passed but already the world had begun to seem peaceful again. The soldiers looked less haggard.
Shadows were not a problem now. For us.
"I'm here," I told the Old Man. The guard outside had sent me right in.
"Where's your mother-in-law?"
"Good question. The other day she said she was going after firewood. We haven't seen her since."
"One-Eye's gone, too."
I gaped. Then I started to snicker. The snicker turned into a guffaw. Before long I was bent double, unable to regain control. "They eloped? Don't tell me they eloped."
"I wouldn't think of it. Knock off the braying. You sound like a jackass giving birth." A stone impossibility. He indicated the alcove where special people were stored. "Use Smoke. Find them."
I headed that way, still shivering with restless giggles. "How come I have to do it? You and Lady were already here."
"We're busy restructuring the force. We don't have time."
"She over being hooked on ghostwalking?"
"She's gonna have to be. Get busy. I don't have time to jack my jaw, either." He pointed. He was not in a playful mood. Must have been getting less sleep than usual.
Smoke was alone behind the curtain. "What happened? You bury the other two?"
"Stashed them in what's left of your dugout. We needed the room. Get to work."
I pulled the curtain. He was the boss. He did not have to be a nice guy all the time.
Smoke did not look the same. Lady had done something to keep him under. He seemed more drugged than comatose.
He smelled, too. Bad. Somebody had been letting their chores slide. "You're the physician, you ought to know about keeping clean. This guy is a mess."
"I'll get you a bucket."
I did not wait for him to tell me. I went to work.
Croaker had made appropriate preparations. There was drinking water and fresh bread. I ate some of the latter immediately. The command types sure lived the good life. I had not had anything but bad bitterroot for the past several days—and not nearly enough of that. A point I ought to make to Rudy.
"Send out for sausages," I muttered. Maybe when we finally found Khatovar it would be like the Vehdna paradise. Hot and hotter running houris driven by an overwhelming passion for smelly old guys with no social skills, houris who spent the rest of their time whipping up lots of freshly cooked food. Good food.
"Quit stalling around," Croaker growled a while later. "That little prick is clean enough."
I was not anxious to go out. "Somebody ought to watch what he eats." Smoke looked like he was suffering the early stages of dietary disease.
Croaker just gave me a dark look. He did not much care, apparently. "You have a problem doing your job?"
"Cranky, cranky."
I had a problem with going out. It had been scary getting batted around between Catcher and Kina and the place of the bones the other day. I had tapped a reservoir of fear I did not know I contained.
I especially did not like being a bird. That part I had not understood at all.
Catcher now knew I could walk the ghostworld without her manipulations. Maybe I could because she had opened the way. Now I feared she could hunt me down and snap me up out there whenever the mood took her. I was not inclined to suffer her torments voluntarily.
"Murgen."
I chomped down a last mouthful of bread, followed it with a slug of water. Bloated, I did what I had to do.
Goblin must have had a notion that he was being watched from afar. Or suspected that he could be. I would not have found him had I had no idea how his mind worked. The clever little shit. The spells he used to camouflage himself and his men were of the simplest sort, almost undetectable. All they did was make the eye wander away from what was probably just a modest boulder lurking in the bushes, gently so as to go unremarked even when you were expecting something. He and his rangers were scattered so no concentration stood out. Mogaba did not appear to be a concern.
I might be wrong but I assumed One-Eye's first move, if he deserted, would be to find Goblin. They had been best friends before anyone else in the Company was born. If you didn't count Lady.
A quick, determined search revealed that One-Eye had not joined Goblin yet. A cruise up and down the road from Kiaulune did not turn him up, either. He must be in hiding for the day.
I did not feel Kina or Soulcatcher. More confident, I found Goblin again, rode Smoke backward in time.
Goblin did a good job ambushing the Prahbrindrah Drah's gang. And no spells concealed the encounter. He'd been too busy with other work.
It was a traditional Black Company-style ambush. The Prince hurried into it at dusk. He was accompanied by several hundred soldiers. They outnumbered Goblin's force heavily. A few arrows wobbled in from the brush south of the road, striking several Taglians. Ululations went up. Brush rustled. More arrows flew.
The Prahbrindrah Drah had no idea who was attacking. Shadowlander partisans probably seemed more likely than the Company. He did not know about Goblin.