there?”
Lady smirked at me. She did not have to tell me. We would cross the valley because, in the end, I would want to see everything for myself. Because I would want to get it all into the Annals, right. She had chided me fifty times during the ride south because I was trying to work out a way to write on horseback. I could get so much more done if I could do it while we were traveling.
Then she chirped, “You are getting old.”
“What?”
“A sign of advancing age. You start obsessing about how much you have to get done in the time that you have left.”
I made noises in the back of my throat but did not argue. That kind of thinking was familiar. So was being unable to fall asleep because I was tracking my heartbeat, trying to tell if something was wrong.
You would think a guy in my line of work would make his peace with death at an early age.
We ran into several locals while crossing the valley, the bottom land of which was decent farmland and pasture. We did not receive one friendly greeting. I did not see one welcoming smile. Nobody raised a hand in defiance but I had no trouble feeling the abiding resentment of a tormented nation. There had been no serious fighting in these parts for years but the adult population were all survivors of the terrible times, whether they were natives or immigrants who had come in to settle the depopulated lands and to escape even worse horrors elsewhere. They did not want the evils of the past to return.
This land had suffered grotesquely under the Shadowmaster Longshadow. It had continued to suffer after his defeat. The Kiaulune wars devoured most everything that Longshadow and the Shadowmaster wars had not. And now the Black Company had returned. Out of the place of glittering stone, an abode of devils. The season of despair appeared to be threatening again.
“Can’t say I blame them,” I told Lady.
“What?”
I explained.
“Oh.” Indifferently. Some attitudes never wither. She had been a powerful lord a lot longer than she had been just another tick on the underbelly of the world. Compassion is not one of the qualities that endeared her to me.
We found Tobo impatient with our dawdling. “I see the old gal’s still here,” I said of the shadowgate. Lady and I produced our keys and let the crew cross over, Murgen first so he could make sure his boy still had all his arms and legs and fingers and toes.
“It is,” the wonder child confessed. “But probably only because Longshadow still hasn’t left the plain.”
“What?” Lady was irritated. “We made promises. We owe the Children of the Dead.”
“We do,” Tobo said. “But we won’t be allowed to kill ourselves. Shivetya knew we forgot to disarm Longshadow’s booby trap so he kept Longshadow from leaving.”
“How do you know that?”
“I sent messengers. That was the news they brought back.”
Lady’s mood had not improved. “The File of Nine will be smoking. We don’t need them as enemies. We may have to flee to the Land of Unknown Shadows again.”
“Shivetya will release Longshadow the second we finish refurbishing our gate.”
My companions were nervous. Willow Swan was pale, sweating, dancing with anxiety and, most of all, un- Swanlike, silent. He had not, in fact, spoken all day.
Thinking about the shadows can do that to you if you have witnessed one of their attacks.
Tobo asked, “You two ready to go to work?”
I shook my head. “Are you kidding?”
Lady said, “No.”
Tobo told us, “I can’t finish this alone.”
I replied, “And you can’t finish it with assistants so tired they’re guaranteed to make mistakes. I have a premonition. Longshadow will keep till tomorrow.”
Tobo admitted that he would. Shivetya would see to it. But he did so with poor grace.
Lady said, “Let’s go set up camp.” Murgen, Swan and the others probably should have been doing that instead of standing around being anxious.
Once we crossed the barrier Lady wondered, “Why is Tobo in such a hurry?”
I snickered. “I think it might have to do with Booboo. He hasn’t seen her for a long time. Sleepy says he was completely smitten.”
While I spoke her expression transformed from curious to completely appalled. “I’d hope not.”
Murgen suggested, “There were two rather attractive Voroshk girls. One of them might have something to do with it.”
44
The Shadowlands:
Gate Repairs
The dreamwalkers came during the night. Their presence was so powerful that even Swan, Panda Man and Spook saw them. I heard them speak clearly although I never understood a word.
Lady and Tobo did get something out of them.
They put their heads together over breakfast. They decided that the Nef wanted to warn us about something.
“You think so?” I sneered. “There’s a new interpretation.”
“Hey!” Tobo chided me. “It has something to do with Khatovar.”
“Like what, for example?”
The youth shrugged. “Your guess is better than mine. I’ve never been there.”
“Last time we saw the dreamwalkers they were headed out into Khatovar in the middle of all the shadows on the plain. You think they saw something they think we ought to know?”
“Absolutely. Any idea what?”
Lady asked, “Have you had your Unknown Shadow friends try to talk to the Nef?”
“I have. It doesn’t work. The Nef don’t communicate with the plain shadows, either.”
“Then what was the Unknown Shadows’ problem last night? The Black Hounds kept carrying on so bad they woke me up several times.”
“Really?” Tobo was puzzled. “I never noticed.”
Nor did I. But I am deaf and blind to most supernatural stuff. Plus, for once, I had not been tossing around listening for my heart to stop.
“Let’s get to work.”
“Booboo isn’t going anywhere, kid.”
Tobo frowned. Then got it. He did not become embarrassed or defensive. “Oh? Oh. You don’t know? She’s already gone. There was a fight with the garrison from Nijha. Runmust’s troop got overrun. The Taglians captured the Daughter of Night. Sleepy has cavalry trying to run them down now.”
I shook my head and grumped, “It won’t do her any good. A million horsemen won’t be enough now.”
“Aren’t you pessimistic.”
“He’s right,” Lady opined. She lapsed into an old northern language I had not heard since I was young and which I never had understood completely. She seemed to be reciting a song as a poem. It had a refrain that went something like, “Thus do the Fates conspire.”
We were on the inside of the shadowgate, hard at it. Tobo was making tiny, elegant adjustments to the strands and layers of magic that made up the mystic portal. The training I had received had elevated me to the level of a semiskilled bricklayer. Compared to me Tobo was the sort of master artisan who created panoramic tapestries by weaving them instead of embroidering them. I was nothing but the lead finger man on the bow-tying
