She Is The Darkness

I had done lately had caught her attention.

There was a good chance the whole thing had been just a game to her, something to while away some time while fragments of her scheme fell into place. Or maybe she had been experimenting. Or both things, and maybe more. What we know for sure about Catcher is that she walks in chaos and her motives are changeable.

I must be driven. I figured that as long as I had to stay out there I ought to keep scouting around. Working in my sleep. Ought to have the Old Man double my pay. How much is two times a stab in the back?

The Prince was making good time. He was headed straight up the road north, which was the only reason I found him. A whole mob of his guys were running with him. And they did keep moving briskly.

Shadows larked around them like wolves on the hunt for dangerous game. It was a running fight. The Prince’s men did not have many bamboo poles but whenever one of the crowd began shrieking he died of fireballitis before the attacking shadows could finish their cruel work.

I wasted no time looking for Mogaba or Goblin. Too much work to find them. Maybe after it got light. Which it ought to be starting by now, only the clouds were so heavy.

I headed back toward Overlook.

Everywhere I went I saw evidence of the latest earthquake: landslides, toppled trees, a collapsed bridge the southerners had rebuilt after the last quake, then had cast down so we could not use it so Cletus and his brothers had had to put it up again. And lots of shelters knocked over or fallen in. And cracks in the ground. And even some damage to Overlook, up where Longshadow had bickered with his pals and then everybody had quarreled with Kina.

As I closed in a large block of white stone slipped out of Longshadow’s tower and plunged toward the foot of the wall. Several more followed quickly. The tower seemed to wobble slightly, as if made of gelatin instead of stone. Then I realized I was seeing an aftershock in progress. Or maybe a temblor even bigger than the last.

Shit! Was the whole damned fortress going to come tumbling down? Lady and her crew were still inside. No. Not possible. No earthquake was going to lay Overlook low. It was just too massive. Practically speaking, there was hardly anywhere for it to fall since it was more stone than empty volume.

Longshadow’s workbenches and mystery engines began to shift.

71

A jet of white fire spurted skyward, ripped open the bellies of the low-hanging clouds. Even in the ghostworld I could hear the roar of energy being released. Crystal near the jet vanished in blue puffs. Farther away it melted and ran like candle wax. It dripped. I saw a glob plummet into a pail of water, sizzle. Right then I decided that if I survived I would climb that tower if it survived and claim that marble as a souvenir.

The jet faded from white to yellow to red, then went dark, but the heat was still there, squirting away less violently, for a while. The Shadowmaster had had a lot of power stashed atop that tower.

Everything burnable in the remains of the chamber was now on fire. Several small shadows scuttled hither and yon. They seemed unwilling to leave despite the disaster. Maybe they were domesticated.

The first raindrops fell. Those passing through the invisible energy jet sizzled into steam.

I was thinking about going down inside the fortress to check on Lady, and having no luck convincing myself, when one of the shadows decided it might be happier hitting the trail. The trail it chose was the one Lady had to have taken with her prisoners.

An entire section of my mind devoted itself to speculating about the futures of Longshadow and Narayan Singh. Narayan’s prospects, I feared, were particularly bleak.

I followed the shadow.

I did not want to do that. But I felt compelled. It might sneak up on Lady and the guys. It might be devoted to its master. It might want to help him get away.

I sort of chuckled at the image of Longshadow trying to run, busted up the way he was.

I had no sympathy for the guy.

I tried sensing Lady’s presence ahead, could not. And I could not go anywhere in a straight line, of course. I still could not walk through walls. Which meant I suffered the same constraints as shadows. Did that mean I could go anywhere shadows could? Did it mean shadows could go anywhere I could?

That was troubling.

There was no light inside Overlook, nor any sound or landmarks. I changed my mind about finding Lady quickly.

I can have nightmares about darkness and tight places even when I am awake.

I turned back. Insofar as I was aware there had been no branchings to make me lose my way.

I ran into a shadow head-on.

There was no source of light but the forge where the torturer heated his instruments. That flickered, illuminating the creased, weathered bronze face of the frightened little man who had not become a soldier because he wanted to but because he believed he owed his gods a service when they demanded it. Like all his own people (and as their enemies did also), he hoped his own gods were strongest and would prevail.

It was one slice of nightmare two seconds long, filled with information so alien most would never make sense to me. I was not sure I should assume that the shadow I had encountered actually connected with a man who had been tortured to death after having been captured in some religious war. No religion in these parts worked that way. Not even the Deceivers did, though they had tortured some victims, in ages past, in the Grove of Doom, during their Festival of Lights.

My encounter with the shadow had not been that bad, really. I did not think collisions would be troublesome as long as I was ghostwalking. But it probably would have been a fatal meeting had it come while I was in my own body.

The incident did leave me goofy and disoriented. I floated back up to the remnants of the crystal chamber. The place had cooled down. The light had gone dead. But there was another light in the world now, despite the overcast. Daylight was coming at last.

Just as I realized that night’s siege was ending a final small volley of fireballs erupted near the Shadowgate. Then the world went still. And for a few minutes nobody and nothing was killing anybody or anything anywhere within sight.

I looked south and reflected that there was no Smoke to keep me from going over there and taking a peek. And shadows did not bother me in this state. And if they did try, why, they behaved like rodents. No matter how big and ferocious, they stayed close to the surface. They wanted to be able to get into hiding quickly. And I could fly.

I started southward. I really did. But something happened.

The earth shook again.

Lightning struck Overlook only a dozen feet away.

Thai Dei woke me up.

The effect was, I headed south but something grabbed me by the scruff of the neck and I spun northward like a leaf snatched up by a dust devil.

“I don’t want to get up,” I told the hand abusing my repose. “I’m tired. I worked all night.” I was tired. I had worked all night. Hard. I did want to roll over and snooze for another eight hours.

Thai Dei poked me again. And then there was the other problem. Maybe a bigger problem.

My feet were wet.

I pushed myself up onto one elbow as Thai Dei told me, “You must get up!”

“I hate to admit it. You’re right. I gotta get up.” I had to get up because rainwater was running in in a stream, turning the floor to mud.

I banged my head against a log. “What the hell?” The overhead had fallen halfway in. The far wall had collapsed. The only reason I could see anything was that Thai Dei had brought a candle, the shadow repeller, when he came to visit. “What happened?”

“Earthquake.”