"But there's a but. Right? The man was a villain after all?"
"He was indeed. In fact, Ashutosh was the man you knew later as Shadowspinner. He was there to find our Key, sent by his teacher and mentor, whom you came to know as Longshadow. At a young age this man had stumbled across rumors that not all the Free Companies had returned to Khatovar. What he understood from that, that nobody else realized, was that each Company still outside must possess a talisman capable of opening and closing the Shadowgate. An ambitious man could use that talisman to recruit rakshasas he could send out to do evil for him. The power to kill becomes the ultimate power in the hands of a man who has no reservations about employing it."
"So this Ashutosh Yaksha found the Key?"
"He only assured himself that it existed. He wormed his way into the confidence of the senior priests. One day someone let something drop. Soon afterward, Ashutosh announced that he had received word that his teacher, mentor and spiritual father, Maricha Manthara Dhumraksha, impressed by his reports on the temple, had chosen to come visit. Dhumraksha turned out to be a tall, incredibly skinny man who always wore a mask, apparently because his face was deformed."
"You heard a name like Maricha Manthara Dhumraksha and you didn't suspect something?"
I could not see Doj in the darkness but I could feel his unhappy frown. He said, "I was a small child."
"And the Nyueng Bao aren't interested in anything not their own. Yes. I'm Vehdna, Uncle, but I recognize the names Manthara and Dhumraksha as those of legendary Gunni demons. Even though you walk amongst lesser beings, you might keep your ears open. That way, when a nasty jengali sorcerer pulls your leg, you'll at least have a clue."
Doj grunted. "He had a golden tongue, Dhumraksha did. When he discovered that each decade, as the custom was then, a band of the leading men undertook a pilgrimage south—"
"He invited himself along and tricked somebody into letting him examine the Key."
"Close. But not quite. Yes. You did guess correctly. The pilgrimage went to the very Shadowgate. The pilgrims would spend ten days there waiting for a sign. I don't believe anyone knew what that might be anymore. But the traditions had to be observed. The pilgrims, however, never took the actual Key with them. They carried a replica charged with a few simple spells meant to fool an inattentive thief. The real Key stayed home. The old men didn't really want a sign from the other side."
"Longshadow got in a hurry."
"He did. When the pilgrims arrived at the Shadowgate, they found Ashutosh Yaksha and a half-dozen other sorcerers waiting. Several were fugitives from that northern realm of darkness where the Black Company was then in service. When Dhumraksha used the false key, his band found themselves under attack from the other side of the Shadowgate. Before the gateway could be stopped up, using the power of Longshadow's true name, three of the would-be Shadowmasters had perished. The one called the Howler, cruelly injured, had fled. The survivors quickly became the feuding, conquering monsters your brothers found in place when they arrived. And the same disaster caused the Mother of Night to reawaken and begin scheming toward a Year of the Skulls once more."
"And that's the great sin of the Nyueng Bao? Letting themselves be hoodwinked by sorcerers?"
"In those days there was little contact with the world outside the swamp. Banh Do Trang's family managed all outside trade. Once a decade a handful of the older men traveled to the Shadowgate. About as frequently, Gunni ascetics would enter the swamp hoping to purify their souls. These Gunni hermits were obviously crazy or they wouldn't have come into the swamps in the first place. They were always tolerated. And Ghanghesha found a home."
"Where does The Thousand Voices fit?"
"She learned the story from the Howler around the time we were trapped in Dejagore. Or soon afterward. She came to the temple soon after we returned, the best of us exhausted, our old men all dead, including our Captain and Speaker, and witch Hong Tray with them. There was no one but me left who knew everything—though Gota and Thai Dei knew some, and Sahra a little, they being of the family of Ky Dam and Hong Tray. The Thousand Voices went to the temple while I was away. She used her power to intimidate and torture the priests until they surrendered the mysterious object that had been given them for safekeeping ages ago. They didn't even know what it was anymore. They really can't be blamed but I can't help blaming them. And there you have it. All the secrets of the Nyueng Bao."
I doubted that. "I doubt that seriously. But it's a basis from which to work. Are you going to cooperate? If we get Narayan Singh to divulge what he did with the Key?"
"If you'll undertake a promise never to tell anyone what I told you here tonight."
"I swear it on the Annals." This was too easy. "I won't say a word to a soul." But I did not say anything about not writing it down.
I did not extract an oath from him.
Sometime, eventually, he would face the moral dilemma that had swallowed the Radisha once it seemed that the Company would fulfill its obligation to her and it was coming time for her to deliver on her own commitments. Once Uncle Doj had his own people out from under the glittering stone, his reliability as an ally would turn to smoke.
Easily dealt with when the time came, I thought. I told Doj, "I still have to work tomorrow. And it's a whole lot later now than it was an hour ago."
He rose, evidently relieved that I had not asked many questions. I did have a few in mind, such as why the Nyueng Bao had risked more frequent pilgrimages to the Shadowgate once the Shadowmasters were in power, adding women and children and old people to the entourage. So I asked anyway, while we were walking.
He told me, "The Shadowmasters permitted it. It added to their feelings of superiority. And it let us keep them thinking that we didn't have the real Key, that we were searching for it. Our own people believed that was what we were doing. Only Ky Dam and Hong Tray knew the whole truth. The Shadowmasters were hoping we'd find it for them."
"The Thousand Voices figured it out."
"Yes. Her crows went everywhere and heard everything."
"And in those days she had a very sneaky demon at her beck and call." I continued to pester him all the way back to the warehouse, cleverly trying to find his remaining secrets by coloring in more map around the blank places.
I did not fool him a bit.
Before I dragged off to bed, I visited Sahra, Murgen and Goblin one more time. "You people get all of that?"
"Most of it," Murgen said. "This weary old slave has been doing some other chores, too."
"Think he told the truth?"
"Mostly," Sahra admitted. "He told no lies that I noticed, but I don't think he told the whole truth."
"Well, of course not. He's Nyueng Bao right down to his twisted toe bones. And a wizard besides."
Before Sahra got indignant, Goblin told me, "There was a white crow out there with you."
"I saw it," I said. "I figured it was Murgen."
Murgen said, "It wasn't Murgen. I was there disembodied. Same as now."
"What was it, then? Who was it?"
"I don't know," Murgen replied.
I did not entirely believe him. Maybe it was a false intuition but I was sure he had a strong suspicion.
33
M aster Santaraksita hardly waited till there were no eavesdroppers before he approached me. "Dorabee, your record is beginning to look bad. Two days ago you were late. Yesterday you didn't show up at all. This morning you don't look alert and ready for work."
I was not. I would have been testy with anyone else. In this case I barely noticed that his words were not spoken in a tone in keeping with their content. I sensed relief in him at my return and a lingering whiff of a fear that I would not. I lied. "I had a fever. I couldn't stay on my feet for more than few minutes at a time. I tried to come in but I was so weak I got lost for a while and eventually ended up just going home."