"Raven has been hospitalized at the compound at the Barrowland. Nothing can be done for him right now. Every effort will be made when an opportunity arises. Sufficient?"
I could not argue, of course.
"Good. Transport will be available. You will have a unique chauffeur. The Lady herself."
"I…"
"I, too, have been thinking. My best next step is to meet your White Rose. I'm going with you."
After gulping quarts of air, I managed, "They'd jump all over you."
"Not if they don't know me. They wouldn't, unless they were told."
Well, no one was likely to recognize her. I am unique in having met her and lived to brag on it. But… Gods, the heaps and bales of buts. "If you entered the null, all your spells would fall apart."
"No. New spells wouldn't work. Spells in place would be safe."
I did not understand and said so.
"A simple glamor will fade on entering the null. It is being actively maintained. A spell which changes and leaves changed, but which isn't active on entering the null, won't be affected."
Something off in the badlands of my mind tickled me. I could not run it down. "If you turned into a frog and hopped in there, you'd stay a frog?"
"If the transformation was actual and not just an illusion."
"I see." I hung a red flag on that, told me to worry it later.
"I will become a companion acquired along the way. Say, someone who can help with your documents."
There had to be levels of deceit. Or something. I could not imagine her putting her life into my hands. I do believe I gawked.
She nodded. "You begin to understand." "You trust me too much." "I know you better than you know yourself. You're an honorable man, by your own lights, with enough cynicism to believe there can be a lesser of two evils. You have been under the Eye." I shuddered. She did not apologize. We both knew an apology would be false.
"Well?" she asked.
"I'm not sure why you want to do this. It makes no sense."
"There is a new situation in the world. Once there were only two poles, your peasant girl and I, with a line of conflict drawn between. But that which stirs in the north adds another point. It can be seen as a lengthening of the line, with my point near the middle, or as a triangle. The point that is my husband intends destroying both your White Rose and myself. I submit that she and I ought to eliminate the greater danger before…"
"Enough. I see. But I don't see Darling being that pragmatic. There's a lot of hatred in her."
"Perhaps. But it's worth a try. Will you help?"
Having been within a stone's throw of the old darkness and seen the ghosts astalk on the Barrowland, yes, I would do most anything to keep that dread spook from shedding his grave. But how, how, how trust her!
She did that trick they all have, of seeming to read my mind. "You will have me within the null."
"Right. I'll need to think some more."
"Take your time. I can't leave for some time." I suspect she wanted to establish safeguards against a palace revolution.
Chapter Forty-One: A TOWN CALLED HORSE
Fourteen days passed before we took air for Horse, a modest town lying between the Windy Country and the Plain of Fear, about a hundred miles west of the latter. Horse is a caravan stage for those traders mad enough to traipse through those two wildernesses. Of late, the city has been the logistical headquarters for Whisper's operations. What skeleton forces were not on the road to the Barrowland were in garrison there.
Damned northbound fools were going to get wet.
We drifted in after an eventless passage, me with eyes agog. Despite the removal of vast armies, Whisper's base was an anthive swirling around newly created carpets.
They came in a dozen varieties. In one field I saw a W formation of five monsters, each a hundred yards long and forty wide. A wood and metal jungle topped each. Elsewhere, other carpets in unusual shapes sat upon ground that looked to have been graded. Most were far longer than they were wide and bigger than the traditional. All had a variety of appurtenances, and all were enveloped in a light copper cage.
"What is all that?" I asked.
"Adaptation to enemy tactics. Your peasant girl isn't the only one who can change methods." She stepped down, stretched. I did the same. Those hours in the air leave you stiff. "We may get the chance to test them, despite my having backed off the Plain."
"What?"
"A large Rebel force is headed for Horse. Several thousand men and everything the desert has to offer."
Several thousand men? Where did they come from? Had things changed that much?
"They have." That damned mind-reading trick again. "The cities I abandoned poured men into her forces."
"What did you mean, test?"
"I'm willing to stop fighting. But I won't run away from a fight. If she persists in heading west, I'll show her that, null or no null, she can be crushed."
We were near one of the new carpets. I ambled over. In shape it was like a boat, about fifty feet long. It had real seats. Two faced forward, one aft. In front there was a small ballista. Aft there was a much heavier engine. Clamped to the carpet's sides and underbelly were eight spears thirty feet long. Each had a bulge the size of a nail keg five feet behind its head. Everything was painted blacker than the Dominator's heart. This boat-carpet had fins like a fish. Some humorist had painted eyes and teeth up front.
Others nearby followed similar designs, though different artisans had followed different muses in Grafting the flying boats. One, instead of fish fins, had what looked like round, translucent, whisper thin dried seed pods fifteen feet across.
The Lady had no time to let me inspect her equipment and no inclination to let me wander around unchaperoned. Not as a matter of trust, but of protection. I might suffer a fatal accident if I did not stay in her shadow. All the Taken were in Horse. Even my oldest friends.
Bold, bold Darling. Audacity. Becoming her signature, that. She had the entire strength of the Plain just twenty miles from Horse, and she was closing in. Her advance was ponderous, though, limited to the speed of the walking trees.
We went out onto the field where the carpets waited, arranged in formal array around the monsters I had spotted first. The Lady said, "I planned a small demonstration raid on your headquarters. But this will be more convincing, I think."
Men were busy around the carpets. The big ones they were loading with huge pieces of pottery which looked like those big urn-planters with the little cup-holes in the upper half for small plants. They were fifteen feet tall; the planter sites were sealed with paraffin, and the bottom boasted a twenty foot pole with a crossbar on its end. Scores were being mounted in racks.
I did a fast count. More carpets than Taken. "All these are going up? How?"
"Benefice will handle the big ones. Like the Howler before him, he has an outstanding capacity for managing a large carpet. The other four bigs will be slaved to his. Come. This one is ours."
I said something intelligent like, "Urk?!"
"I want you to see it."
"We might be recognized."
Taken circled the long, skinny boat-carpets. Soldiers were aboard them, in the second and third seats. The men facing aft checked their ballistae, munitions, cranked a spring-powered device apparently meant to help restretch bowstrings after missiles were discharged. I could see no apparent task assigned the men in the middle seats. "What's the cagework for?"
"You'll learn soon enough."
"But…"
"Come to it fresh. Croaker. Without preconceptions."
I followed her around our carpet. I do not know what she checked, but she seemed satisfied. The men who had prepared it were pleased by her nod.
"Up, Croaker. Into the second seat. Fasten yourself securely. It'll get exciting before it's over."