honesty of his guests.
After some nervous shuffling Narayan Singh assumed a protective stance beside the Daughter of Night. I noted a triangle of black silk peeping from the top of his loincloth. He had dressed formally tonight, then. That would be his strangling cloth, his rumel.
“In more normal times,” Longshadow said, “I would go out to the Shadowgate personally and employ the traps there to collect the shadows I want to use. To obtain the best effect they have to be trained. Once they are properly trained they will leave their friends alone. The skrinsa can employ them without troubling me. But these are not normal times.”
No. They were not. And when he mentioned the shadowweavers I began to wonder if he knew just how bad off he was when it came to followers. At no time had he ever had much contact with those who managed the daily business of his fortress. He gave orders. They got executed. Only a handful of his people had survived Lady’s last attack. They continued to care for him. Howler had seen to that.
He no longer had any shadowweavers to manage any trained shadows he might have.
On the other hand...
At one time there had been a crystal chamber atop a tower every seventy feet along Overlook’s southern wall. Inside each was a mirror that could be used to cast the light there in a beam onto the ground surrounding the road down from the Shadowgate. It had taken a couple of men to aim each mirror.
Longshadow did something by moving small figurines in a collection on a table, as though making multiple moves in a board game. He said a single word.
The lights in the surviving tower tops waxed brilliant. Light beams reached out across the night. Like accusing fingers they swung to point in the general area of Croaker’s Old Division. They did not light up the slope nearly as well as they had in former times but I was impressed. They did their jobs without the aid of one human hand.
The others there were impressed, too. Narayan seemed a little troubled, the Howler suddenly restless. Longshadow did not notice. He moved on to his next step. He said, “The lights are unnecessary to coming events. I just thought it would be amusing if our enemies watched one another scream their lives out.”
He giggled.
Howler sat up straight as a spear, suddenly alert. He did not like the way things were going.
Maybe Longshadow was not as big a fool as everyone thought.
I spent a moment too long watching the girl for a reaction. Smoke did his she is the darkness reaction and started to back off. I held him. We were about to witness some excitement.
Longshadow stepped up to the big crystal sphere standing on a pedestal at the center of the chamber. His audience watched carefully, nervously. This was not something he had done in front of witnesses before. I doubted they knew what the sphere was.
The globe was four feet in diameter. What looked like little tunnels followed wormtracks in to a hollow place at its center. As Longshadow stepped closer shimmering light rippled over its surface, like oil on water but much more intense. Snakes of cold fire wriggled through the channels inside. It was a hell of a show.
Longshadow raised his spidery hands. Carefully, he removed his gloves and pushed up his sleeves. The skin he revealed seemed both translucent and pus-colored, with speckles of blue beneath, like cheese. He had a fine crop of liver spots. There was almost no flesh on him at all.
The Shadowmaster rested his hands on the surface of the sphere. The lights inside became excited. The surface shimmer climbed his fingers, covered his hands. His fingers sank into the globe like hot rods slowly melting their way into ice. He grabbed the worms of light and began twisting.
He began to talk in a conversational sort of voice, of course using a language that nobody recognized though the Daughter of Night frowned and leaned forward as though she was able to puzzle out a word here and there.
The Shadowmaster summoned a shadow. I could not see it. It was inside the pedestal supporting the globe. But I felt it. There was not much to it but it was very, very cold.
The Howler dropped to the floor and leaned closer to watch. Narayan and the Daughter of Night stared, bemused. The kid took a few steps forward. Singh moved closer to the door, for a better angle of view.
Longshadow spoke for several minutes, his eyes closed tightly. As he finished the brightness inside the globe began to fade. He opened his eyes and stared out southward as he had done ten thousand times before, watching the area illuminated by the mirrors.
She is the darkness! I was not looking at the brat... Not that darkness.
A very special darkness. A surprise darkness that should not have caught me that far off guard, considering. Soulcatcher.
She stepped in through a door opened by Narayan Singh as though she had been about to knock.
Longshadow was not ready for this. Not at all. He was surrounded, totally betrayed, before he realized Catcher had arrived.
I clung there with all the power I had to resist Smoke’s terror. The little shit whined and repeated she is the darkness! like that was some mantra against the fangs of the night.
“The game ends,” Soulcatcher said in the booming, basso voice of a crier in an amphitheater. Then she giggled like a teenaged girl. “It’s been hard work but worth it. I really like my new house.” Both those sentences arrived in the voice of a little old man who keeps account books.
Longshadow was caught, trapped, pinned like a butterfly on a collector’s display board. He was surrounded, outnumbered, and did not have a chance even if he was the greatest wizard who ever lived. Which he was not. Even so, he did not surrender.
He knew his value. His mind was not clouded. She dared not kill him because the Shadowgate would collapse.
I had to give in to Smoke. I had to get this news back fast.
I really needed to get it to Lady fastest but there was no way.
Longshadow moved slowly to pick up his gloves. As he began to pull one on, Soulcatcher said, “I think not.” Her voice was the velvet tenor of a tombstone salesman. “In fact, it’s time...”
Longshadow’s right pinky was crooked, as though it had been broken and badly set a long time ago. The nail looked like a bit of rotten, dried out, blackened spinach leaf.
The Shadowmaster flicked that little finger.
The nail flew off just as Catcher said, “...time...”
I shook my ghostly head. You never see everything.
In one eyeblink that nail became a shadow filled with hatred for the light.
Smoke’s wriggling became irresistible.
64
I reached for a mug of water even as I sat up. Groggily, it dawned on me that I had been shoved into the cramped little alcove where the Old Man had been keeping Smoke since we sneaked him over from One-Eye’s pesthole. There were voices beyond the ragged hangings concealing me.
I took a long drink, stirred Smoke’s blankets around so he would be hidden, ran my fingers through my hair, stepped out of hiding.
The voices stopped instantly. Croaker looked about as angry as he could get. I told him, “It’s that important.” Which left a baffled look on the faces of Swan and Blade. “Good thing they’re handy. You guys go outside for a minute? Take the candle.”
“What the fuck are you doing?” Croaker demanded. He had to make a major effort to keep his voice down.
“Soulcatcher just took over Overlook.”
“Huh?”
“She walked in while Longshadow was cutting the shadows loose. Which he did, by the way. And she and Singh and the kid and Howler all jumped him. You needed to know right now. This changes everything. Lady should hear as soon as possible, too.”
