once.
A Voice spoke to me but I could not comprehend its words. I floated like gossamer through golden caverns where old men sat beside the way, frozen in time, immortal but unable to move an eyelid. Madmen, they, some were covered with fairy webs of ice as though a thousand winter spiders had spun threads of frozen water. Above, an enchanted forest of icicles grew downward from the cavern ceiling.
Because I had memories of memories within memories I recalled having read words very much like those somewhere in something I did not believe had yet been written.
“Come!”
The power of the call was like the punch of a thunderbolt.
Darkness came. I tumbled away, ceased being I. Nevertheless, before I faded from that cavern I sensed a startled presence coming alert and striving to direct its attention my way.
Somehow I had gone somewhere where no mortal was welcome to travel and still come away.
Memory fled. But pain went along on the journey.
50
Light in the darkness, again. I began to be I, though without a name. I shied from the light. The light was not a pleasant place. The pain would be waiting. But something farther beneath my surface turned to the light like a drowning man fighting toward lifesaving air.
I became aware that I was flesh. I felt my muscles, tightened till some were cramped. My throat was painfully dry. I tried to talk. “Speaker ...” I rasped.
Someone stirred but no one replied. I was slumped in a chair.
The Nyueng Bao had no furniture in their place, which was little more than an animal den. Had they returned me to my own people?
I forced an eye open.
What the hell? What was this place? A dungeon? A torture chamber? Had Mogaba snatched me? There was a skinny little Taglian over there, tied into a chair just like mine, and another man was strapped onto a table.
That was Smoke, the Taglian royal wizard! I levered myself up. That hurt. A lot. The prisoner in the chair watched me warily. “Where am I?” I asked.
His wariness redoubled. His lips pursed. He said nothing. I looked around. I was in a dusty, almost barren chamber but the nature of the stone answered my question. I was in Taglios. This was the Royal Palace. There is no stone like this stone anywhere else.
How?
Ever seen paint run down a wall? That is what happened to reality. Right in front of my eyes it ran and dribbled and streaked. The man in the chair squeaked. He shook. I have no idea what he thought he saw. But reality drifted away and I was in a grey place, confused, filled with memories of things never experienced or seen. Then the confusion began to sort itself out and the grey washed away and in a short time I was in a room somewhere in the Palace at Trogo Taglios. Smoke lay on his table breathing slowly and shallowly as always. The Deceiver was in his seat. He earned a narrow-eyed glare because of the way he was sweating. What was he up to now?
His eyes bugged. What did he see when he looked at me? I rose, aware that I had to be recovering from one of my spells. But there was no one here who could have brought me back. Didn’t it take Croaker or One-Eye to drag me up out of the depths of darkness?
Hints of memory stirred in the deeps of my mind. I snatched at them, tried desperately to hang on. Something in a cavern. A song of shadow. Waking up once in a past long ago but still only a moment earlier in this time.
I was weak. This business was debilitating. And thirst was becoming a rage within me.
I could do something about that. A pitcher and metal cup stood on the table beside Smoke’s head. Beneath the cup I found a scrap of paper torn from a larger sheet. It carried a message in Croaker’s tight script.
The scrap might have come from a procurement request. The Old Man hates to waste any fragment of blank paper. Paper is too damned dear.
I checked the tin box on the other side of Smoke’s head. It was filled with heavy, unleavened cakes of the sort my mother-in-law bakes despite all pleas to desist. In fact, on closer examination, I knew no one else could have baked them. If I survived here I would owe Croaker a swift kick in the slats.
So that was what he was doing when I woke up. He wanted to worm out so he could murder me and my pal Smoke and then make a run for it.
I drank from the pitcher. The Deceiver looked at me with a longing you could almost smell. “Want a sip?” I asked. “Just tell me what’s going on.”
The man was not yet ready to sell his soul for a drink of water.
Soon after I wolfed down one of Mother Gota’s sinkers I felt my strength returning. “Let’s get you cinched up good and tight,” I told my companion. “Wouldn’t want you wandering off and getting hurt.”
He stared at me in silence while I fixed him up. He didn’t need to speak to let me know what was on his mind. I told him, “This is the risk you took when you signed on with the bad guys.”
He would not argue but he refused to agree. I was confused.
I was the bad guy because I wasn’t blazing hot on the effort to bring Kina back into the world. I patted his head. “You could be right, brother. But I hope not. Here.” I snatched up the cloth and drew it back over him, where it belonged. Then I drank some more water and ate part of a roll and when I got to feeling frisky I decided to return to my apartment. It was subjective as hell but it was an age since I had seen my wife. In reality it could not have been more than a few hours. I got lost.
51
Of course I got lost. It was inevitable. The future me within me did not recall anything else but it did remember that I was going to get lost, then find my way to someplace I was not trying to go. That much came to me just after I realized that I did not have a clue how to get back to any familiar part of the Palace. I stopped to take stock.
At that moment I had enough near-current memories of other Murgens from other times that I was ready to trust any memory from any time, though it came with no supporting context whatsoever.
This memory of getting lost carried flavors of the excitement of unexpected discovery and powerful overtones of pain. An echo told me I did not want to find my way again.
Somewhere, while still stubbornly trying to get out, I came upon a gloomy hallway that seemed to smell of old magic. A few yards away a shattered door hung precariously upon a single hinge.
Discovery beckoned. I went forward unafraid.
One look inside told me I had found Smoke’s secret library the place where the only surviving copies of the first several Annals had been gathered and sealed away so there would be no chance we Black Company types would ever chance upon them. I wanted to read them so badly. But I had not come to read. I did not have time to sort the wheat from the chaff of a hundred other books. I had to get back to my family.
I strove valiantly but could not get there. Head spinning, I tried to retrace my steps. It looked like I would have to wait with Smoke until One-Eye or the Old Man turned up. They could lead me out the easy way and maybe tell me why I did not want to go, because that part would not come to mind clearly. I got back to Smoke easily, with no misturns. I had begun to suspect that there were spells webbed into that part of the Palace, cast so no intruder could find his way around the maze without One-Eye’s blessing. It might be that all paths led to the same destination. Or maybe they all led away if you did not start out with Smoke to begin.
