not suspect that you had survived the tooga. Your family are cunning in their cruelty.”
Sahra nodded. Still she did not trust herself to speak.
Gods, she was beautiful!
“They knew from half a world away, child. This frightens me. These are terrible times and terrible people walk among us. Some of them we cannot recognize. The Bone Warriors appear no more frightful than any others, yet—”
“A message, Uncle?” She used that word as an honorific. Trang was not related in any way.
“Yes. I’m sorry. I grow so frightened whenever I spend too much time thinking.”
Sahra took my letter, stared at it a moment, reluctant to find out what was inside. But she was happy, too, I could see. Her husband’s brotherhood knew and cared. “Who brought this?”
“He did not give a name. He is very young. He is Jaicuri. Vehdna. Low caste.”
“He has a scar that makes his left eyelid droop so when you see him from that side it looks like he’s having trouble staying awake?”
“Indeed. You know him?”
“I remember him.” She turned my letter over again.
“Do it, child.”
“I’m scared.”
“Fear is the mind-killer.”
Damn! All of a sudden he sounded like Uncle Doj back when he was giving me fencing and fighting lessons. Was old Trang another one of these secret priests?
Sahra opened the message. She stared down at what I had written, in big, careful, clear characters. Finally, she said, “Read it for me, please, Uncle.”
Trang stuck a little finger into his left ear and dug around amongst the tufts. That old man had more hair there than on top of his head. He scanned my message, which he held in his other hand. He took a while to digest and think. Then he looked up at Sahra. He opened his mouth to speak, suffered a thought, looked around as though startled.
It had occurred to him that it was, apparently, somehow, possible for us to see what was happening inside the temple of Ghanghesha. It had occurred to him that this was a moment that would interest us very much. Particularly a Soldier of Darkness name of Murgen.
“It purports to be a letter from your husband.” He hesitated just a fraction of a heartbeat as he decided to leave out the adjective “foreign.”
“It is. I know his hand. What does it say?”
“It says he isn’t dead. That they told him you were dead. That he knows where you are and what your circumstances are because a great magic has been made available to him. That he will come to you as soon as the Shadowmaster is crushed.”
That was actually pretty close to what I had written.
Sahra started to cry.
Sahra? I wanted to hold her. She was always the strong one. The disasters that overtook her could not break her. Always she soldiered on. No tears for Sahra, ever.
I did not like seeing her emotionally distressed.
I drifted nearer Trang. He shuddered, looked around. “That’s not all he said. He said he loves you and he hopes you’ll forgive him for the failure that let this happen.”
Sahra stifled her tears. She nodded. “I know he loves me. The question is, why do the gods hate me? I’ve done nothing to harm them.”
“The gods don’t think the way we do. They scheme schemes in which a life is only a flicker, just a second in a century. They do not ask us if we want to participate, perhaps as an alternative to happiness. They use us as we use the beasts of forest, swamp and field. We’re the clay they sculpt.”
“Uncle Trang, I don’t need a homily. I need my husband. And I need to be free of the machinations of old men...” Sahra started. She gestured, indicating that someone was outside, that Trang should be quiet. I drifted out of Sahra’s cell.
A priest stood a step away from her door, poised in uncertainty. He must have heard something as he was passing. He glanced both ways along the unlighted hall, down at his own small lamp, then moved to Sahra’s door and cocked an ear.
I swooped in close, poured all my anger into my will and tried to butt heads with him.
He spun around. He started to shake. He hurried away. I could scare more than birds if I got mad enough.
I went back inside. Sahra wanted Trang to send a reply. Her speaking the words were all the reply I needed although I would look forward to the note as a physical confirmation of our eternal connection, an icon to carry with me till we saw one another again. Trang agreed but he chose his words carefully. He kept looking around like he thought the place was haunted. He asked, “How is your pregnancy going?”
“That is one thing I do very well, without great effort or trouble, Uncle. I have babies.”
“This one will be bigger than your first two. Your husband is a big man.”
“Do you expect the child to be a devil, too?”
Trang smiled thinly. “Not in the sense others might mean. But in the sense of Hong Tray’s prophecy, probably. Your grandmother was a wise woman. Her prophecies all come to pass—though not always in the manner we imagined when she offered them.”
“She said nothing about any monster.”
“What she said and what your mother and Doj heard were not necessarily the same. There are things people just don’t want to hear.”
He had my interest on several fronts. I might learn something more about Uncle Doj. I might learn something about this prophecy of Hong Tray’s, which, so far, was almost as mysterious as the concerted determination of all Taglians that the Black Company had to be some sort of catastrophe in the making, worse than any flood or earthquake. Trang disappointed me. He said nothing more. In fact, he struck a listening attitude.
I popped into the hallway.
The man I had frightened before was returning. And he was bringing friends.
I swooped at him again, angrier than before. He was no hero. He squealed and took off. His companions yammered among themselves. They decided their friend must have mental problems. They went after him instead of going on to Sahra’s cell. I followed to make sure.
Trang was gone when I got back. A flick through time provided me no useful information.
61
Sahra had moved to her pallet. She was on her knees there, palms atop her thighs, staring straight forward. Waiting.
I drifted into position in front of her.
“You’re here, aren’t you, Mur? I can feel it. You’re what I’ve felt before, aren’t you?”
I tried to answer her. I got she is the darkness! from Smoke and a reeling back. Why now? Sahra had not bothered him before. Had she?
He did not like any female these days. He even tensed up around the Radisha when we were there.
I pushed inward. Smoke pushed back. Sahra sensed something. She said, “I’m too heavy to travel now. I’ll come as soon as our son can travel.”
A son? Me?
I became a different man in that moment. But it lasted only a few seconds. Only until I wondered, how could she know that?
Some people called her a witch. Well, spooky. I never saw it myself.
But maybe she could know.
My world began to shudder and shake. I had enough experience ghostwalking to know that meant somebody
