“A shovel? Are you off your gourd?” One-Eye demanded.
“Just get it. And do something for the pain.”
Elmo materialized, still buckling buckles. “What happened, Croaker?”
“Old Tree wanted to talk. Had the rocks bring me over. Says he wants to help us. Only while I was listening, that hand got ahold of me. Like to ripped my foot off. The racket was the tree saying, ‘Now stop that. That’s not polite.’”
“Cut his tongue out after you fix his leg,” Elmo told One-Eye. “What did it want, Croaker?”
“Your ears gone? To help with the Dominator. Said he thought it over. Decided it was in his own best interest to keep the Dominator down. Give me a hand up.” One-Eye’s efforts were paying dividends. He had sponged one of his wild jungle glops onto my ankle-it had swollen three times normal size already-and the pain was fading.
Elmo shook his head.
I said, “I’ll break your damned leg if you don’t get me up.” So he and Silent hoisted me, but supported me.
“Bring them shovels,” I said. A half dozen had appeared.
They were entrenching tools, not real ditchdiggers. “You guys insist on helping, get me back over to the tree.”
Elmo growled. For a moment I thought Silent might say something. I eyed him expectantly, smiling. I had been waiting twenty-some years.
No luck.
Whatever vow he had taken, whatever it was that had driven him to abstain from speech, it had put a steel lock on Silent’s jaw. I have seen him so pissed he could chew nails, so excited he lost sphincter control, but nothing has shaken his resolution against talking.
Blue still sparkled in the tree’s branches. Leaves tinkled. Moonlight and torchlight mixed into weird shadows the sparks sent dancing... “Around him,” I told my body slaves. I had not seen it myself, so it must be beyond that trunk.
Yep. There it was, out twenty feet from the base of the tree. A sapling. It stood about eight feet tall.
One-Eye, Silent, Goblin, those guys gobbled and gaped like startled apes. But not old Elmo. “Get a few buckets of water and soak the ground good,” he said. “And find an old blanket we can wrap around the roots and the dirt that comes up with them.”
He caught right on. Damned farmer. “Get me back downstairs,” I said. “I want to see this ankle myself, in better light.”
Going back, with Elmo and Silent carrying me, we encountered the Lady. She put on a suitably solicitous act, fussing all over me. I had to endure a lot of knowing grins.
Only Darling knew the truth even then. With maybe a little suspicion on Silent’s part.
Forty-Seven
Shadows in Shadowland
There was no time inside the Barrowland, only shadow and fire, light without source, and endless fear and frustration. From where he stood, snared in the web of his own device, Raven could discern a score of Domination monsters. He could see men and beasts put down in the time of the White Rose to prevent those evils from escaping. He could see the silhouette of the sorcerer Bomanz limned against frozen dragon fire. The old wizard still struggled to take one more step toward the heart of the Great Barrow. Didn’t he know that he had failed generations ago?
Raven wondered how long he had been caught. Had his messages gotten through? Would help come? Was he just marking time till the darkness exploded?
If there was a clock to count the time, it was the growing distress of those set to guard against the darkness. The river gnawed ever closer. There was nothing they could do. No way for them to summon the wrath of the world.
Raven thought he would have done things differently had he been in charge back when.
Vaguely, Raven recalled some things passing nearby, shades like himself. But he knew not how long ago, or even what they were. Things moved at times, and one could tell nothing certain. The world had a whole different look from this perspective.
Never had he been so helpless, so frightened. He did not like the feeling. Always he had been master of his destiny, dependent upon no one...
There was, in that world, nothing to do but think. Too much, too often, his thoughts came back to what it meant to be Raven, to things Raven had done and not done and should have done differently. There was time to identify and at least confront all the fears and pains and weaknesses of the inside man, all of which had created the ice and iron and fearless mask he had presented to the world. All those things which had cost him everything he had valued and which had driven him into the fangs of death again and again, in self-punishment...
Too late. Far too late.
When his thoughts cleared and coagulated and he reached this point, he sent shrieks of anger echoing through the spirit world. And those who surrounded him and hated him for what he might have triggered, laughed and reveled in his torment.
Forty-Eight
Flight west
Despite my exoneration by the tree, I never quite regained my former status with my comrades. Always there was a certain reserve, perhaps as much from envy of my apparent sudden female wealth as from trust slow to heal. I cannot deny the pain it caused me. I had been with those guys since I was a boy. They were my family.
I did take some ribbing about getting onto crutches in order to get out of work. But my work would have gone on had I had no legs at all.
Those damned papers. I had them committed to memory, set to music. And still I did not have the key we sought, nor what the Lady hoped to find. The cross-referencing was taking forever. The spelling of names, in pre-Domination and Domination times, had been free-form. KurreTelle is one of those languages where various letter combinations can represent identical sounds.
Pain in the damned fundament.
I do not know how much Darling told the others. I was not at the Big Meeting. Neither was the Lady. But word came out: The Company was moving out.
One day to get ready.
Topside, near nightfall, on my crutches, I watched the windwhales arrive. There were eighteen of them, all summoned by Father Tree. They came with their mantas and a whole panoply of Plain sentient forms. Three dropped to the ground. The Hole puked up its contents.
We began boarding. I got a ration because I had to be lifted, along with my papers, gear, and crutches. The whale was a small one. I would share it with just a few people. The Lady. Of course. We could not be separated now. And Goblin. And One-Eye. And Silent, after a bloody sign battle, for he did not want to be separated from Darling. And Tracker. And the child of the tree, for whom Tracker was guardian and I was in loco parentis. I think the wizards were supposed to keep an eye on the rest of us, though little they could have done had a situation presented itself.
Darling, the Lieutenant, Elmo, and the other old hands boarded a second windwhale. The third carried a handful of troops and a lot of gear.
We lifted off, joined the formation above.
A sunset from five thousand feet is unlike anything you will see from the ground. Unless you are atop a very lonely mountain. Magnificent.
With darkness came sleep. One-Eye spelled me under. I still had a good deal of swelling and pain.
Yes. We were outside the null. Our whale flew the far flank from Darling. Specifically for the Lady’s benefit.
Even then she did not give herself away.
The winds were favorable and we had the blessing of Father Tree. Dawn found us passing over Horse. It was there the truth finally surfaced.
Taken came up, all in their fish-carpets, armed to the gills.
Panic noises wakened me. I got Tracker to help me stand. After one glance at the fire of the rising sun, I spied the Taken drifting into guardian positions around our whale. Goblin and them expected an attack. They howled their hearts out. Somehow One-Eye found a way for it all to be Goblin’s fault. They went at it.