Ghopal glanced around nervously, completely failing to note Mogaba’s intense examination. He blurted, though in a whisper, “She has to go. The Greys have believed that for a long time. The Year of the Skulls couldn’t be much more terrible than what we’ve suffered from her. But we don’t know how to get rid of her. She’s too powerful. And too smart.”
Mogaba relaxed. So the Greys were not enamored of their benefactor. Interesting. Excellent.
“But we’ll never get rid of her. She always knows what everyone around her is thinking. And we’ll never be able not to think about it because we’ll be so scared. She’ll sniff it out in about ten seconds. Really, we’re walking dead men now, just for having considered it.”
“Then get your family out of town now,” Mogaba told him. It was Soulcatcher’s habit to exterminate her enemies root and branch. “I’ve been giving this a lot of thought. I think that the only way it could be managed would be to have everything in place and strike before she has a chance to look around and pick up clues. We might engineer it so that she arrives exhausted. That might give us the edge we need.”
Aridatha mused, “Whatever it is, it will have to be sudden and massive and a complete surprise.”
“She’ll begin to suspect,” Ghopal said. “There are too many people loyal to her, because without her they’ll be dead themselves. They’ll warn her.”
“Not if we don’t get carried away. If just us three know what’s happening. We’re in charge. We can give any orders we want. People won’t question us. There’s trouble on the streets and it’s getting worse. People will expect us to do something about it. Plenty of others hate the Protector. They’ll feel free to act up while she’s away. That gives us an excuse to do almost anything we want. If we mainly use people whose loyalty to the Protector is absolute, letting them do most of the work and carry the messages, there’s no reason she should suspect anything until it’s too late.”
Ghopal looked at him like he was whistling in the dark. Maybe he was. Mogaba said, “I’ve opened my mouth here. I’ve committed myself. And I have nowhere to run.” They were natives. They could vanish into the territories. There was nowhere he could hide. And a return to Gea-Xle had been out of the question for twenty-five years. The Nar back home knew all about what he had done.
Aridatha mused, “Then every day in every way we should do our jobs to the utmost on the Protector’s behalf—until we create a rattrap we can close like this.” He clapped his hands.
“We’ll only get one chance,” Mogaba said. “Five seconds after we fail we’ll all be praying for death.” He waited a moment during which he checked the smoke. Its usefulness was almost exhausted. “Are you in?”
Both Singhs nodded but neither showed an unbound eagerness. The truth was, it was a poor bet that any of them would survive this adventure.
Mogaba sat in his quarters staring out at a full moon. He wondered if it had been too easy. Were the Singhs genuinely interested in ridding Taglios of the Protector? Or had they just played along, sensing that he was the more deadly threat at the moment?
If they were not committed he would learn the truth only when Soulcatcher sank her teeth into his throat.
He was going to be an intimate acquaintance of fear for a long time to come.
22
Khatovar:
Invasion
Swan volunteered to slither down to the shadowgate with me. I demurred. “I think I’ll take my sweetheart. We don’t get many chances to get away together.” And she would have a steadier hand than I would when it came to working on the shadowgate. Which, even from the head of the slope, could be seen to need restoration.
After examining the shadowgate from a closer vantage, I told my beloved, “Bowalk really tore it up getting through.”
“She had shadows gnawing on her. According to what Sleepy says Shivetya showed her. Tell me you’d be gentle and not slam the door if you had those things after you.”
“I don’t even want to think about it. Are we safe? Is anything out there watching?”
“I don’t know.”
“What?”
“I have a little power here on the plain. A dim one-hundredth of what used to be. But outside the shadowgates I might as well be deaf, dumb and blind. All I can do is pretend.”
“So Kina is alive, then?”
“Possibly. If I’m not just tapping Shivetya or some residual, ambient power. The plain is a place of many strange energies. They leak in from the different worlds.”
“But you believe you’re bleeding Kina again. Don’t you?”
“If I am, she’s not just sleeping, she’s in a coma.”
“There!”
“There what?”
“I thought I saw something move.”
“That was just the breeze stirring the branches.”
“You think so? I’m not inclined to take chances.”
The sarky witch said, “You stand guard. I’ll work on the gate.”
If she did I could not tell. She was less active than I would have been.
We were through. Into Khatovar. I did not feel like I had found my way into paradise. I did not feel like I had come home. I felt the letdown I had expected almost from the moment I had become aware that my lust to find Khatovar had been imposed upon me from without. Khadi’s Gate was a wasteland.
Clete and Loftus started laying out a camp close enough to the gate that we could make a quick getaway if that became necessary. I was still at the gate itself, surveying this world where the Black Company had been born.
Definitely the disappointment I had anticipated. Maybe even worse.
Something stirred the hair on the back of my neck. I turned. I saw nothing but had a distinct feeling that something had just come through the shadowgate.
I caught movement in the edge of my vision. Something dark. A shape both large and ugly.
One of the Black Hounds.
The back of my neck went cool again. Then again.
Maybe Tobo was coming after all.
The darker of my two ravens settled onto a nearby boulder. After a shower of hisses directed nowhere in particular, it cocked a big yellow eye my way and said, “There are no occupied human dwellings within fifty miles. The ruins of a city lie under the trees below the rocky prominence to the northeast. There are signs that humans visit it occasionally.”
I gaped. That damned bird was better-spoken than most of my companions. But before I could strike up a conversation, it took to the air again.
So there were people in this world. But the closest were at least three days away.
The promontory the bird mentioned was the place where the fortress Overlook had stood in our own world. The ruins likely occupied the same site as Kiaulune.
Another chill on the neck. The Unknown Shadows continued to come through.
I went down to camp. The engineer brothers were old but efficient. It was livable right now—as long as we got no rain.
The rain would be along before long. It was clear it rained often here.
Fires were burning. Somebody had killed a wild pig. It smelled heavenly, roasting. Shelters were going up. Sentries were out. Uncle Doj had appointed himself sergeant of the guard and was making a circuit of the four guardposts.
