16
I've got it!" I shouted, running back to the corner where Murgen's friends and family were trying to torment him into taking a broader interest in the world of the living. "I found it! I've got it!"
"I hope you ain't gonna give it to me," One-Eye grumbled.
My excitement was so loud and intense even Murgen, who was caught in the mist and being a real pain about his situation, paused to study me.
"I had a feeling, an intuition the other day, that the answer was in the Annals. In Murgen's Annals. And I'd just overlooked it. Maybe because it had been so long since I read them and I wouldn't have thought to look for it back then."
"And, behold!" One-Eye sneered. "There it was. In ink of gold on myrex-tinted paper, with little scarlet arrows saying, ‘Here it is, Little Girl. The secret of the—' "
"Stuff it, dustbag," Goblin snapped. "I want to hear what Sleepy found." Though it would have been him doing the sarcasm if One-Eye had not beat him to it.
"It's the whole thing with the Nyueng Bao. Well, maybe not all of it," I said as Sahra scowled at me. "But the part with Uncle Doj and Mother Gota and why they came out of the swamp when they didn't have a debt of honor like your brother, Sahra." Sahra's brother Thai Dei was under the glittering plain with Murgen, serving as his bodyguard because of what Murgen and the Company had done to help the Nyueng Bao during the siege of Jaicur. "Sahra, you must know some of this."
"That may be true, Sleepy. But you'll have to tell us what you're talking about first."
"I'm talking about whatever it was that The Thousand Voices stole from the Temple of Ghanghesha sometime between the end of the siege and when Uncle Doj and your mother invited themselves to come stay with you here in Taglios. Murgen touches on it over and over, lightly, but I don't think he ever really caught on completely. Whatever it was that The Thousand Voices stole, Uncle Doj called it ‘the Key.' From other internal evidence, I think it had to be another key to the Shadowgate, like the Lance of Passion." The Thousand Voices was what the Nyueng Bao called Soulcatcher. "I think if we had that key, we could open the way for the Captured."
If I was guessing right here, I had created a whole new line of inquiry: Why the Nyueng Bao?
Sahra began shaking her head slowly.
"Am I wrong? What is the Key, then?"
"I'm not saying you're wrong, Sleepy. I'm saying I don't want you to be right. There are things I wouldn't want to be true."
"What? Why?"
"Myths and legends, Sleepy. Ugly myths and legends. Some of them I'm not supposed to know. And I know I don't know them all. Probably none of the worst. Doj was their curator and keeper. As you are for the Black Company. But Doj never shared his secrets. Tobo, find your grandmother. Bring her here. Get Do Trang, too, if he's here."
Bewildered, the boy shuffled away.
A spectral whisper came out of the device where Murgen waited. "Sleepy may be right. I recall suspecting something like that and wondering if I could find a good history of the Nyueng Bao so I could figure it out. You'll need to question Willow Swan, too."
I said, "I'll do that later. Separately. Swan doesn't need to know what's happening. Are you paying attention now, Standardbearer? Do you have any idea where we're at and what we're doing?"
"I do." His tone was resigned, though. Like mine when I know I have to get up in the morning, want to or not.
"Tell me about the Temple of Ghanghesha, then. Both of you. Why would this Key have been kept there?"
Sahra did not want to talk about it. Her whole body said she was caught up in a ferocious internal struggle.
"Why is this so hard?" I asked.
"There is old evil in my people's past. I'm only vaguely familiar with it. Doj knows the whole truth. The rest of us just understand that our ancestors were guilty of a great sin and until we expiate it, our whole race is condemned to live in bitter destitution in the swamp. The temple was a holy place long before some Nyueng Bao began to adopt Gunni beliefs. It protected something. Possibly the Key you mentioned. The thing Uncle Doj has been looking for."
"Where did the Nyueng Bao come from, Sahra?" That question had intrigued me since childhood. Each few years hundreds of those strange people would pass through Jaicur on pilgrimage. They were quiet and orderly and stayed to themselves. And a year after they arrived from the north, they would pass through again, going back that way. Even at the height of the power of the Shadowmasters, that cycle had continued. Nobody knew where they went. Nobody ever cared.
"Out of the south somewhere, a long time ago."
"From beyond the Dandha Presh?" I could not imagine subjecting little children and old folks to the rigors of a journey of that magnitude. The pilgrimage had to be very important indeed.
"Yes."
"But there are no pilgrimages anymore." The one that had ended up with hundreds of Nyueng Bao dying in Jaicur was the last of which I was aware.
"The Shadowmaster and the Kiaulune wars made the next few times impossible. There's supposed to be a pilgrimage every four years. Each Nyueng Bao De Duang has to make the pilgrimage at least once as an adult. For a while the lack was no problem. But now the Protector will not permit the people to meet their obligations," Banh Do Trang rasped from his wheelchair, having arrived in time to catch the drift of my interrogation. "There are things we do not discuss with those who aren't Nyueng Bao."
I got the feeling he was saying the same thing twice at one time, one way for my benefit and another for Sahra's. This could be ticklish. We dared not offend Banh Do Trang, whose friendship we needed. If we lost him, we also risked losing Sahra, whose value to the Company could not be calculated.
Nothing is ever simple and straightforward.
I told the old man the way I had it figured. Ky Gota waddled in just as I started. My eyes widened as One-Eye gallantly offered her his seat. It is a world just chock-full of wonders. The little wizard went and got another seat, which he set next to Gota's. The two of them sat there leaning on their canes like a couple of temple gargoyles. A ghost of ancient beauty peeked out of the wide, permanent scowl that Gota used for a face.
I explained the situation. "But here's the mystery. Where is the Key today?"
Nobody volunteered that information.
"I'd think that if The Thousand Voices still had it, she'd be running down to Kiaulune every month to round up a new gaggle of killer shadows. It if could open the Shadowgate safely. And if Uncle Doj had it, he wouldn't be roaming around looking for it. He'd be back in the swamp blithely letting the rest of us go to al-Sheil in a handcart. Am I wrong? Mother Gota? You know the man. You must be able to offer something."
Able, perhaps. Willing, of course not. The big thing that stands out, to my ear, about the Company's sojourn in the south, is the stubborn silence of so many people. About everything. Like if we even discovered our own birthdays, that would be something we could use against them. The fact that the Company now consists almost entirely of native soldiers has not helped at all. Our life does not attract the knowledgeable, educated portion of the population. If a priest offered to sign on, we would send him downriver, knowing for certain that he was a spy.
"You got the damned gimmick?" One-Eye asked.
"Who?"
"You, Little Girl. The villainess, you. I didn't forget that you were Soulcatcher's guest for a while, when she caught you on the road coming back from running that message for Murgen. I haven't forgotten that when our sweet old Uncle Doj rescued you it was incidental. He was looking for his missing trinket, the Key. Not so?"