“Let them go.” Croaker faced friends he had not seen for months. “From the Book of Cloete: ‘In those days the Company was in service to the Syndarchs of Dai Khomena, and they were delivered...’” His friends all grinned and roared approval. He grinned back. “Hey! We’ve got work to do here. We’ve got a city to evacuate. Let’s hit it.”
From one eye he watched the boat cross the lake, from the other he kept watch on Sindhu.
It felt good to be back.
Thus was Dejagore delivered and the true Company set free.
Chapter Seventy-Two
The Howler perched atop a tall stool, out of the way while Longshadow prepared. He was impressed by the array of mystical and thaumaturgic gewgaws Longshadow had assembled during one short generation. Such had remained scarce while they had been in thrall to the Lady and nonexistent under the rule of her husband before her. They had wanted no one getting independent. Howler had very little though he was free now. He had little need to possess.
Not so Longshadow. He wanted to own at least one of everything. He wanted to own the world.
Not much of Longshadow’s collection was in use now. Not much would be ever, Howler suspected. Most had been gathered mainly to keep anyone else from having it. That was the way Longshadow thought.
The room was brightly lighted, partly because it was approaching noon beyond the crystal walls, partly because Longshadow had packed a score of brilliant light sources into the room, no two of which used the same fuel. Against an ambush of shadows he left no precaution untaken.
He would not admit it but he was terrified.
Longshadow checked the altitude of the sun. “Noon coming up. Time to start.”
“Why now?”
“They’re least active under a noonday sun.”
“Oh.” Howler did not approve. Longshadow meant to catch one of the hungry big ones to train and send after Soulcatcher. Howler thought that a stupid plan. He thought it unnecessary and overly complicated. They knew where she was. It made more sense just to hit her with more soldiers than she could handle. But Longshadow wanted drama.
This was too risky. He could loose something nothing in this world could control. He did not want to be part of this but Longshadow left him no choice. Longshadow was a master of leaving one no choice.
Several hundred men climbed the old road to the plain, dragging a closed black wagon ordinarily drawn by elephants. But no animal would go near the shadowtraps, however much it was beaten. Only Longshadow’s men feared him more than they feared what might befall them up there. Longshadow was the devil they knew.
Those men backed the wagon against the main shadowtrap.
Longshadow said, “Now we begin.” He giggled. “And tonight, in the witching hour, your old comrade will cease to be a threat to anyone.”
Howler was skeptical.
Chapter Seventy-Three
Soulcatcher sat in the middle of a field, disguised as a stump. Crows circled, their shadows scooting over wheat stubble. An unknown city loomed in the distance.
The imp Frogface materialized. “They’re up to something.”
“I’ve known that since they started blocking the crows. What they’re up to is what I want to know.”
The imp grinned, described what he had seen.
“Either they’ve forgotten to take you into account or they’re counting on you feeding me incorrect information.” She started moving toward the city. “But if they wanted to feed me false information they would confuse the crows, too. Wouldn’t they?”
The imp said nothing. No answer was expected.
“Why do this during the daytime?”
“Longshadow is scared to death of what might break out if he tried during the night.”
“Ah. Yes. But they won’t move till nightfall. They’ll want their sending at full strength.”
Frogface muttered something about just how much did he have to do to earn his freedom?
Soulcatcher laughed, a merry little girl’s laugh. “Tonight, I think, you’ll have done with me. If you can do a creditable illusion of me.”
“What?”
“Let’s have a look around this city first. What’s its name?”
“Dhar. New Dhar, really. Old Dhar was levelled by the Shadowmasters for resisting too strongly back when they first conquered this country.”
“Interesting. What do they think of the Shadowmasters?”
“Not much.”
“And a new generation is at hand. This could be amusing.”
When darkness fell the great public square at the heart of New Dhar was strangely empty and silent, except for the cawing and fluttering of crows. All who approached developed chills and dreads and decided to come another time.
A woman sat on the edge of a fountain paddling her fingers through the water. Crows swarmed around her, coming and going. From the shadows at the square’s edge another figure watched. This one seemed to be a gnarled old crone, folded up against a wall, her rags clutched tightly against, the evening cool. Both women seemed content to stay where they were indefinitely.
They were patient, those two.
Patience was rewarded.
The shadow came at midnight, a big, dreadful thing, a terrible juggernaut of darkness that could be sensed while still miles away. Even the untalented of New Dhar felt it. Children cried. Mothers shushed them. Fathers barred their doors and looked for places to hide their babies and wives.
The shadow roared into the city and swept toward the square. Crows squawked and dipped around it.
It bore straight down on the woman at the fountain, dreadful and implacable.
The woman laughed at it. And vanished as it sprang upon her.
Crows mocked.
The woman laughed from the far side of the square.
The shadow surged, struck. But the woman was not there. She laughed from behind it.
Frogface, pretending to be Soulcatcher, led the shadow around the city for an hour, took it into places where it would destroy and kill and be recognized and fire hatreds long and carefully banked. The shadow was tireless and persistent but not very bright. It just kept coming, indifferent to what effect it had on the population, waiting for its quarry to make a mistake.
The crone on the edge of the square rose slowly, hobbled to the palace of Longshadow’s local governor, entered past soldiers and sentries apparently blind. She hobbled down to the strongroom where the governor stored the treasures he wrested from the peoples in his charge, opened a massive door none but the governor supposedly could open. Once inside she became not a crone but Soulcatcher in a rnerry mood.
She had studied the shadow carefully while Frogface led it about. That shadow had to travel all the distance between two points. Frogface did not. He could stay ahead forever as long as he remained alert.
Her studies had shown her how she might contain it.
She spent an hour preparing the vault so it would keep the shadow in, then another arranging a peck of little spells that should distract it so that, by the time someone released it, it would have forgotten why it had come to New Dhar.
