needs to unravel the puzzle and rescue me. Croaker leaned against the wall, the way he does, satisfied now that I was talking.
“Same as every other time. Just less painful. Although this time when I started out I wasn’t really me. That was different. I was just a disembodied voice, just a viewpoint giving a guide’s sort of speech to a faceless visitor.”
“Also disembodied?” Croaker asked. This variation had him interested.
“No. There was somebody there. A complete person but he had no face.”
Goblin and Croaker exchanged troubled looks. At that time Otto and Hagop were still away. “What sex?” Croaker asked.
“Wasn’t clear. It wasn’t the Faceless Man, though. I don’t think it was anybody from our past. Might just have been something out of my own head. I might have separated me into pieces so I wouldn’t have to deal with so much pain in such big blasts.”
Goblin shook his head, not buying that. “It ain’t you, Murgen. Something is doing this. Besides who, we want to know why and why you. Did you catch any clues? How did it go? Try for specifics. It’s teeny details that will give us our handle.”
“I was detached completely when it started. I went down into it gradually. Then I was the Murgen back then, living it all over again, trying to get it all down in the Annals, unaware of the future at all. You remember going swimming when you were a kid? When somebody would come up out of the water behind you to dunk you? He would jump in the air and put his hand on top of your head, then let his weight push you under? If you were in deep water instead of just going straight down you would sort of curve through the water and lay out flat? This whole thing went like that. Only once I was out flat I couldn’t float to the top. I forgot that I have done it all before, almost always the same way, who knows how many times? Maybe if I could remember the future back then I could change the way things went, or maybe at least I could make extra copies of my books so they don’t get...”
“What?” Croaker was alert now. Mention the Annals and you have his undivided attention. “What was that?”
Did he realize that I was remembering the future? In this time my volumes of the Annals are still safe.
The fear and the pain swarmed in on me, then. The despair followed. Because despite all those plunges back there, and despite the visits here, I cannot stop anything from happening. No amount of willpower can divert the river from the horrors.
For a moment I could not talk because I had so much to say. Then, obliquely, I managed, “You came here about the Grove of Doom. Right?” I knew this night. I have been through this country often enough to know its terrain well. Here the landscape varies slightly from visit to visit but afterward time becomes the same relentless river.
If I squinted I could almost see the ghosts of other versions playing out alternate dialogs.
Croaker was surprised. “The grove?”
“You want me to take the Company out to the Grove of Doom. Right? It’s time for some Deceiver festival. You think Narayan Singh himself might show up for this one. You think there’s a good chance to catch him or to catch somebody who knows where he has your baby hidden. Worst chance, you think we’ll get the opportunity to kill lots of them and make them hurt more than they already do.”
Croaker has been implacable in his resolve to exterminate the Deceivers. More so even than Lady has been, I think, and she was the more deeply insulted of the two. Once upon a time he wanted his legacy to be the completion of the Black Company’s historical cycle. He wanted to be captain when the Company returned to Khatovar. He has the dream still but a nightmare shoved it aside. The nightmare demands satisfaction. Until its gossamer thread of terror, pain, cruelty and revenge has been spun, Khatovar is going to remain nothing but an excuse, not a destination.
Croaker eyed me uncertainly. “How could you know about the grove?”
“I came back knowing.” Which was true. But the two of us would not give the same meaning to “back.”
“You’ll take the men out there?”
“I can’t not.”
Goblin eyed me weirdly, too, now.
I would do it. And I knew how it would go but I could not tell them that. There were two minds inside my head. The one doing this thinking wasn’t the one heaving on the running lines and reefing the sails.
“I’m all right now,” I told them. And, “I think there is a way to keep me from falling back. At least, to keep me from going so far back. But I can’t get it out.” I would have shared gladly. I did not want to keep stumbling off the edge of time to fall back into those too real dark dreams of Dejagores past. Not even if I tumbled into a viewpoint almost blind to the horror and cruelty everywhere then.
Croaker started to say something.
I interrupted. “I’ll be down for the staff meeting in ten minutes.”
I could not tell them anything directly but maybe I could get something out sideways.
But I knew nothing would change. The worst of all horrors was waiting up ahead and I was powerless to avert it.
I’d still do my best in the grove. Just in case this time that would come out differently. If I could remember the future well enough to make the right moves.
You. Whoever you are. Whatever you are. You keep dragging me to the wellsprings of pain. Why do you do that? What do you want? Who are you? What are you?
As always, you give me no answers.
14
The goddamned wind had teeth. We huddled in our blankets, shivering, as unmotivated as guys get without hanging it up. Weren’t many of us wanted to be in that haunted grove in the first place.
Yet something I could not quite catch, some elusive emotion deep inside me, told me this was critical, that this had to be done just right. That more than I could imagine hinged upon that.
Unseen trees creaked and cracked. The wind groaned and whined. It was easy to let your imagination get away and brood on the fact that thousands had been tortured and murdered there. You might hear their moans inside the wind, their pleas for mercy ignored even now. You might expect to see broken corpses rising up to demand vengeance on the living.
I faked being a hero. I could not stop shaking, though. I pulled my blanket tighter. That did not help, either.
“Candyass!” One-Eye sneered. Like the little shit wasn’t about to have a seizure himself. “That bonehead Goblin don’t quit farting around and get his dead ass back here I’m gonna go strip him barebutt and nail him to a chunk of ice.”
“That’s creative.”
“Don’t be no wiseass, Kid. I’ll...”
An especially exuberant gust took off with what he would.
It wasn’t just the cold making us shake, though nobody would admit that. It was the place and the mission and the fact that heavy cloud cover robbed us of even the meager comradeship of starlight.
It was goddamned dark. And these Stranglers might now be friends with the man who ran shadows. A little bird said. Actually, a big black bird said.
“We spend too much time in town,” I grumbled. One-Eye didn’t respond. Thai Dei did, though, with a grunt. But that was a speech for this particular Nyueng Bao.
The wind brought the creak of a stealthy footfall. One-Eye barked, “Goddamnit, Goblin! Quit stomping around. You want the whole damned world to know we’re here?” Never mind that Goblin could not be heard five feet away, dancing. One-Eye refuses to be constrained by mundane reason or consistency.
Goblin drifted into place in front of me, squatted. His little yellow teeth chattered. “All set,” he murmured. “Whenever you’re ready.”
“We’d better do it, then. Before I break out in a case of common sense.” I grunted as I rose. My knees
