“Yeah.”
Startled, I whirled. Elmo was behind me, one hand shading his eyes. He looked as old and tired as I felt. Each day something reminds me that none of us are young anymore. Hell, none of us were young when we came north, over the Sea of Torments. “We need new blood, Elmo.” He sneered.
Yes. We will be a lot older before this is done. If we last. For we are buying time. Decades, hopefully. The rider crossed the creek, stopped. He raised his hands.
Men materialized, weapons held negligently. One old man alone, at the heart of Darling’s null, presented no danger.
Elmo, Goblin, and I strolled down. As we went I asked Goblin, “You and One-Eye have fun while you were gone?” They have been feuding for ages. But here, where Darling’s presence forbids it, they cannot play sorcerous tricks.
Goblin grinned. When he grins, his mouth spreads from ear to ear. “I loosened him up.”
We reached the rider. “Tell me later.” Goblin giggled, a squeaking noise like water bubbling in a teakettle. “Yeah.”
“Who are you?” Elmo asked the mule rider. “Tokens.”
That was not a name. It was a password for a courier from the far west. We had not heard it for a long time. Western messengers had to reach the Plain through the Lady’s most tamed provinces.
“Yeah?” Elmo said. “How about that? Want to step down?” The old man eased off his mount, presented his bonafides. Elmo found them acceptable. Then he announced, “I’ve got twenty pounds of stuff here.” He tapped a case behind his saddle. “Every damn town added to the load.” “Make the whole trip yourself?” I asked. “Every foot from Oar.” “Oar? That’s...”
More than a thousand miles. I hadn’t known we had anyone up there. But there, is a lot I do not know about the organization Darling has assembled. I spend my time trying to get those damned papers to tell me something that may not be there.
The old man looked at me as though subjecting my soul to an accounting. “You the physician? Croaker?”
“Yeah. So?”
“Got something for you. Personal.” He opened his courier case. For a moment everyone was alert. You never know. But he brought out an oilskin packet wrapped to protect something against the end of the world. “Rains all the time up there,” he explained. He gave me the packet.
I weighed it. Not that heavy, oilskin aside. “Who’s it from?”
The old man shrugged. “Where’d you get it?” “From my cell captain.”
Of course. Darling has built with care, structuring her organization so that it is almost impossible for the Lady to break more than a fraction. The child is a genius.
Elmo accepted the rest, told Otto, “Take him down and find him a bunk. Get some rest, old-timer. The White Rose will question you later.”
An interesting afternoon upcoming, maybe, what with this guy and Corder both to report. I hefted the mystery packet, told Elmo, “I’ll go give this a look.” Who could have sent it? I knew no one outside the Plain. Well... But the Lady would not inject a letter into the underground. Would she?
Twinge of fear. It had been a while, but she had promised to keep in touch.
The talking menhir that had forewarned us about the messenger remained rooted beside the path. As I passed, it said, “There are strangers on the Plain, Croaker.”
I halted. “What? More of them?”
It reverted to character, would say no more.
Never will I comprehend those old stones. Hell, I still don’t understand why they are on our side. They hate all outsiders separately but equally. They and every one of the weird sentiences out here.
I slipped into my quarters, unstrung my bow, left it leaning against the earth wall. I settled at my worktable and opened the packet.
I did not recognize the hand. I found the ending was not signed. I began to read.
Three
Story from yesteryear
Croaker:
The woman was bitching again. Bomanz massaged his temples. The throbbing did not slacken. He covered his eyes. “Saita, sayta, suta,” he murmured, his sibilants angry and ophidian.
He bit his tongue. One did not make a sending upon one’s wife. One endured with humbled dignity the consequences of youthful folly. Ah, but what temptation! What provocation!
Enough, fool! Study the damned chart.
Neither Jasmine nor the headache relented.
“Bloody hell!” He slapped the weights off the corners of the chart, rolled the thin silk around a wisp of glass rod. He slipped the rod inside the shaft of a fake antique spear. That shaft was shiny with handling. “Besand would spot it in a minute,” he grumbled.
He ground his teeth as his ulcer took a bite of gut. The closer the end drew, the greater was the danger. His nerves were shot. He was afraid he might crack at the last barrier, that cowardice would devour him and he would have lived in vain.
Thirty-seven years was a long time to live in the shadow of the headsman’s axe.
“Jasmine,” he muttered. “And call a sow Beauty.” He flung the door-hanging aside, shouted downstairs, “What is it now?”
It was what it always was. Nagging unconnected with the root of her dissatisfaction. An interruption of his studies as a payback for what she fancied was his having misspent their lives.
He could have become a man of consequence in Oar. He could have given her a great house overstuffed with fawning servants. He could have draped her in cloth-of-gold. He could have fed her tumble-down fat with meat at every meal. Instead, he had chosen a scholar’s life, disguising his name and profession, dragging her to this bleak, haunted break in the Old Forest. He had given her nothing but squalor, icy winters, and indignities perpetrated by the Eternal Guard.
Bomanz stamped down the narrow, squeaky, treacherous stairway. He cursed the woman, spat on the floor, thrust silver into her desiccated paw, drove her away with a plea that supper, for once, be a decent meal. Indignity? he thought. I’ll tell you about indignity, you old crow. I’ll tell you what it’s like to live with a perpetual whiner, a hideous old bag of vapid, juvenile dreams...
“Stop it, Bomanz,” he muttered. “She’s the mother of your son. Give her her due. She hasn’t betrayed you.” If nothing else, they still shared the hope represented by the map on silk. It was hard for her, waiting, unaware of his progress, knowing only that nearly four decades had yielded no tangible result.
The bell on the shop door tinkled. Bomanz clutched at his shopkeeper persona. He scuttled forward, a fat, bald little man with blue-veined hands folded before his chest. “Tokar.” He bowed slightly. “I didn’t expect you so soon.”
Tokar was a trader from Oar, a friend of Bomanz’s son Stancil. He had a bluff, honest, irreverent manner Bomanz deluded himself into seeing as the ghost of his own at a younger age.
“Didn’t plan to be back so soon. Bo. But antiques are the rage. It surpasses comprehension.”
“You want another lot? Already? You’ll clean me out.” Unsaid, the silent complaint: Bomanz, this means replenishment work. Time lost from research.
“The Domination is hot this year. Stop pottering around, Bo. Make hay, and all that. Next year the market could be as dead as the Taken.”
“They’re not... Maybe I’m getting too old, Tokar. I don’t enjoy the rows with Besand anymore. Hell. Ten years ago I went looking for him. A good squabble killed boredom. The digging grinds me down, too. I’m used up. I just want to sit on the stoop and watch life go by.” While he chattered, Bomanz set out his best antique swords, pieces of armor, soldiers’ amulets, and an almost perfectly preserved shield. A box of arrowheads with roses engraved. A pair of broad-bladed thrusting spears, ancient, heads mounted on replica shafts.
“I can send you some men. Show them where to dig. I’ll pay you commission. You won’t have to do anything. That’s a damned fine axe, Bo. TelleKurre? I could sell a bargeload of TelleKurre weaponry.”