"It is," the wonder child confessed. "But probably only because Longshadow still hasn't left the plain."
"What?" Lady was irritated. "We made promises. We owe the Children of the Dead."
"We do," Tobo said. "But we won't be allowed to kill ourselves. Shivetya knew we forgot to disarm Longshadow's booby trap so he kept Longshadow from leaving."
"How do you know that?"
"I sent messengers. That was the news they brought back."
Lady's mood had not improved. "The File of Nine will be smoking. We don't need them as enemies. We may have to flee to the Land of Unknown Shadows again."
"Shivetya will release Longshadow the second we finish refurbishing our gate."
My companions were nervous. Willow Swan was pale, sweating, dancing with anxiety and, most of all, un-Swanlike, silent. He had not, in fact, spoken all day.
Thinking about the shadows can do that to you if you have witnessed one of their attacks.
Tobo asked, "You two ready to go to work?"
I shook my head. "Are you kidding?"
Lady said, "No."
Tobo told us, "I can't finish this alone."
I replied, "And you can't finish it with assistants so tired they're guaranteed to make mistakes. I have a premonition. Longshadow will keep till tomorrow."
Tobo admitted that he would. Shivetya would see to it. But he did so with poor grace.
Lady said, "Let's go set up camp." Murgen, Swan and the others probably should have been doing that instead of standing around being anxious.
Once we crossed the barrier Lady wondered, "Why is Tobo in such a hurry?"
I snickered. "I think it might have to do with Booboo. He hasn't seen her for a long time. Sleepy says he was completely smitten."
While I spoke her expression transformed from curious to completely appalled. "I'd hope not."
Murgen suggested, "There were two rather attractive Voroshk girls. One of them might have something to do with it."
44
The Shadowlands: Gate Repairs
The dreamwalkers came during the night. Their presence was so powerful that even Swan, Panda Man and Spook saw them. I heard them speak clearly although I never understood a word.
Lady and Tobo did get something out of them.
They put their heads together over breakfast. They decided that the Nef wanted to warn us about something.
"You think so?" I sneered. "There's a new interpretation."
"Hey!" Tobo chided me. "It has something to do with Khatovar."
"Like what, for example?"
The youth shrugged. "Your guess is better than mine. I've never been there."
"Last time we saw the dreamwalkers they were headed out into Khatovar in the middle of all the shadows on the plain. You think they saw something they think we ought to know?"
"Absolutely. Any idea what?"
Lady asked, "Have you had your Unknown Shadow friends try to talk to the Nef?"
"I have. It doesn't work. The Nef don't communicate with the plain shadows, either."
"Then what was the Unknown Shadows' problem last night? The Black Hounds kept carrying on so bad they woke me up several times."
"Really?" Tobo was puzzled. "I never noticed."
Nor did I. But I am deaf and blind to most supernatural stuff. Plus, for once, I had not been tossing around listening for my heart to stop.
"Let's get to work."
"Booboo isn't going anywhere, kid."
Tobo frowned. Then got it. He did not become embarrassed or defensive. "Oh? Oh. You don't know? She's already gone. There was a fight with the garrison from Nijha. Runmust's troop got overrun. The Taglians captured the Daughter of Night. Sleepy has cavalry trying to run them down now."
I shook my head and grumped, "It won't do her any good. A million horsemen won't be enough now."
"Aren't you pessimistic."
"He's right," Lady opined. She lapsed into an old northern language I had not heard since I was young and which I never had understood completely. She seemed to be reciting a song as a poem. It had a refrain that went something like, "Thus do the Fates conspire."
We were on the inside of the shadowgate, hard at it. Tobo was making tiny, elegant adjustments to the strands and layers of magic that made up the mystic portal. The training I had received had elevated me to the level of a semiskilled bricklayer. Compared to me Tobo was the sort of master artisan who created panoramic tapestries by weaving them instead of embroidering them. I was nothing but the lead finger man on the bow-tying team.
Even Lady was little more than a hodcarrier on this job. But hodcarriers are needed, too.
"Thanks for the compliment," Tobo said after I tried out my similes. "But I'm mostly doing embroidery and plain old-fashioned knot tying on broken threads. Parts of this tapestry were plain outright crippled. It'll never be completely right, even if it's stronger than when it started."
"But you can weasel Longshadow's booby trap out of there?"
"It's kind of like lancing a boil and cleaning it out, but yes. He actually made a pretty crude job of it. Obviously, he didn't know much about shadowgates. He did know that there was no one in our world who knew more. What he didn't understand was that there were more keys."
"Of course he knew," I said. "That's why he sent Ashutosh Yaksha, his apprentice, to infiltrate the Nyueng Bao priests at the temple of Ghanghesha."
Tobo looked puzzled, like he did not recall that story.
"He knew they had a key there and he wanted it. So he could get back to Hsien. If you don't know that story you'd better corner your uncle. Because that's what he told Sleepy."
Tobo smiled weakly. "Well, maybe. I suppose."
"What do you mean, you suppose?"
Lady paused what she was doing. "Don't play Doj's games, Tobo. You won't be fooling anybody. I was there. Inside the white crow. I know what the man said."
"That's probably it. Doj told Sleepy a bunch of stories. Some were probably true but some he probably made up. Stuff he thought might be true because it sounded plausible based on what he did know. Master Santaraksita spent years searching the records at Khang Phi. The history of our world's Nyueng Bao isn't much like what Doj might've wanted you to believe."
"Which was it?" I mused aloud. "Was he lying or making it up?" I have known plenty of people who would not admit ignorance even in the most obvious circumstance.
Tobo said, "Master Santaraksita says our ancestors left Hsien as fugitives, sneaking out like snakes using a secretly manufactured key. They were trying to get away from the Shadowmasters. There was supposed to be a regular, gradual evacuation across the plain. Because they were persecuted followers of Khadi they did favor the organizational structure we've seen in other bands of believers but those people weren't mercenaries and they weren't missionaries. They weren't a Free Company. They weren't a band of Stranglers. They were just running away because the Shadowmasters insisted they had to give up their religion. Master Santaraksita says their priests probably made up a more dramatic history after they'd been settled in the river delta for a while. After several generations spent wandering. Before they arrived the only people in the swamp were Taglian fugitives and criminals and a few remote descendants of the Deceivers Rhaydreynek tried to wipe out. Maybe the Nyueng Bao wanted to impress them."
Tobo's hands never stopped moving while he talked. But their movements had nothing to do with what he was saying. He was mending things that I could not see.
"How much did Doj lie?" I was determined to pin that on him. I never did trust that old man.
"That's the intriguing part. I don't know. I don't think he really knows. He did tell me that a lot of what he told Sleepy originally he said just because it sounded believable and like something she wanted to hear. When you get right down to it, except for his skill with Ash Wand, Uncle Doj is a bigger fraud than most priests. Most priests actually believe what they preach."