Boom! Boom!
Somebody hammered on my door. I glanced at Lady. She had stayed up
late last night and so had fallen asleep while studying this
evening. She was determined to discover all the secrets of Hsien
magic and to help Tobo harness the startlingly plentiful
supernatural manifestations of this world. Not that Tobo needed
much help anymore.
This world has more real phantoms and marvellous beings hiding
in the bushes and behind the rocks and trees and on the edge of
night than any twenty generations of our own frightened peasants
could imagine. They gravitate toward Tobo as though he is some sort
of nightside messiah. Or amusing pet, maybe. Boom! Boom! I would have to get off my butt myself. That looked
like a long, hard trek over there. Boom! Boom! “Come on, Croaker! Wake up!” The door
swung inward as my visitor invited himself inside. The very devil
of my thoughts.
“Tobo . . . ”
“Didn’t you hear the baobhas singing?”
“I heard a racket. Your friends are always kicking up a
fuss about something. I don’t pay any attention
anymore.”
“When the baobhas sing it means somebody is going to die.
And there’s been a cold wind off the plain all day and Big
Ears and Golden-Eye have been extremely nervous
and . . . it’s One-Eye, sir. I just went
over to talk to him. He looks like he’d had another
stroke.”
“Shit. Let me get my bag.” No surprise, One-Eye
suffering a stroke. That old fart has been trying to sneak out on
us for years. Most of the vinegar went out of him back when we lost
Goblin.
“Hurry!”
The kid loved that old shit-disturber. Sometimes it seemed like
One-Eye was what he wanted to be when he grew up. In fact, it
seemed Tobo venerated everybody but his own mother, though the
friction between them diminished as he aged. He had matured
considerably since my latest resurrection.
“I’m hurrying as fast as I can, Your Grace. This old
body doesn’t have the spring it did in the olden
days.”
“Physician, heal thyself.”
“Believe me, kid, I would if I could. If I had my druthers
I’d be twenty-three years old for the rest of my life. Which
would last another three thousand years.”
“That wind off the plain. It has Uncle worried,
too.”
“Doj is always worried about something. What does your
father say?”
“He and Mom are still at Khang Phi visiting Master
Santaraksita.”
At a tender twenty Tobo is akeady the most powerful sorcerer in
all this world. Lady says he might possibly become a match for her
in her prime. Scary. But he has parents he calls Mom and Dad still.
He has friends he treats like people, not objects. He accords his
teachers respect and honor instead of devouring them just to prove
that he is stronger. His mother raised him well, despite having
done so in the environment of the Black Company. And despite his
innate rebellious streak. I hope he will remain a decent human
being once he comes into his full powers.
My wife does not believe that is possible. She is a pessimist
about character. She insists that power corrupts. Inevitably. She
has only her own history by which to judge. And she sees only the
dark side of everything. Even so, she remains one of Tobo’s
teachers. Because, despite her bleak outlook, she retains the silly
romantic streak that brought her here with me.
I did not try to keep up with the boy. Time definitely has
slowed me. And has left me with an ache for every one of the
thousands of miles this battered old corpse has trudged. And it has
equipped me with an old man’s talent for straying off the
subject.
The boy never stopped chattering about the Black Hounds, fees,
hobs and hobyahs and other creatures of the night that I have never
seen. Which is all right. The few he has brought around have all
been ugly, smelly, surly, and all too eager to copulate with humans
of any sex or sexuality. The Children of the Dead claim that
yielding is not a good idea. So far discipline has held.
The evening was chill. Both moons were up. Little Boy was full.
The sky was totally clear except for a circling owl being pestered
by what appeared to be a brace of night-flying rooks. One of those,
in turn, had some smaller black bird skipping along behind it,
darting in and out as it prosecuted reprisals for some corvine
trangression. Or just for the hell of it, the way my sister-in-law
would do.
Likely none of the flyers were actual birds.
A huge something loomed beyond the nearest house. It made
snorting noises and shuffled away. What I made out looked vaguely
like the head of a giant duck. The earliest of the conquering
Shadowmasters had possessed a bizarre turn of humor. This big,
slow, goofy thing was a killer. Among the worst of the others were
a giant beaver, a crocodile with eight legs and a pair of arms and
many variations of the themes of killer cattle, horses and ponies,
most of which spend their daytimes hiding underwater.
The most bizarre beings were created by the nameless
Shadowmaster now recalled as the First One or the Master of Time.
His raw material had consisted of shadows off the glittering plain,
which in Hsien are known as the Host of the Unforgiven Dead. It
seems appropriate that Hsien be called the Land of Unknown
Shadows.
A long feline roar ripped the night. That would be Big Ears or
his sister Cat Sith. By the time I reached One-Eye’s place
the Black Hounds had begun to vocalize, too.
One-Eye’s house was scarcely a year old. The little
wizard’s friends raised it after they completed their own
places. Before that One-Eye and his girlfriend, Tobo’s
grandmother Gota, lived in an ugly, smelly little stick-and-mud
hut. The new place was of mortared stone. It had a first rate
thatch roof above its four large rooms, one of which concealed a
still. One-Eye might be too old and feeble to weasel his way into
the local black market but I am sure he will continue distilling
strong spirits till the moment his own spirit departs his wizened
flesh. The man is dedicated.
Gota kept the house spotless via the ancient device of bullying
her daughter Sahra into doing the housework. Gota, still called the
Troll by the old hands, was as feeble as One-Eye. They were a
matched pair in their passion for potent beverages. When One-Eye
gave up the ghost he would be drawing a gill of the hard stuff for
his honey.
Tobo poked his head back outside. “Hurry up!”
“Know who you’re talking to, boy? The former
military dictator of all the Taglias.”
The boy grinned, no more impressed than anyone else is these
days. “Used to be” is not worth the breeze on which it
is scribbled.
I tend to philosophize about that, probably a little too much.
Once upon a time I was nothing and had no ambition to be anything
more. Circumstance conspired to put immense power into my hands. I
could have ripped the guts out of half a world had that been my
inclination. But I let other obsessions drive me. So I am here on
the far side of the circle, where I started, scraping wounds,
setting bones and scribbling histories nobody is likely to read.
Only now I am a lot older and crankier. I have buried all the
friends of my youth except One-Eye . . .
I ducked into the old wizard’s house.
The heat was ferocious. One-Eye and Gota had trouble keeping
warm even in summer. Though summers in southern Hsien seldom become
hot.
I stared. “You sure he’s in trouble?”
Tobo said, “He tried to tell me something. I didn’t
understand so I came for you. I was afraid.” Him. Afraid.
One-Eye was seated in a rickety chair he had built for himself.
He was motionless but things stirred in the corners of the room,
usually only visible at the edge of my eye. Snail shells cluttered
the floor. Tobo’s father, Murgen, calls them brownies after
little folk recalled from his youth. There had to be twenty
different races of them around, from no bigger than a thumb to half
a man high. They really did do work when nobody was looking. That
drove Sleepy crazy. It meant she had to work harder to think up
chores to keep the Company’s villains out of trouble.
An overpowering stench pervaded One-Eye’s house. It came
from the mash for his still.
The devil himself looked like a shrunken head the shrinker had
not bothered to separate from its body. One-Eye was a little bit of
a thing. Even in his prime he had not been big. At two hundred and
some years old, with both legs and most of one arm in the grave, he
looked more like a shriveled monkey than a human being.
I said, “I hear tell you’re trying to get some
attention again, old man.” I knelt. One-Eye’s one eye
opened. It focused on me. Time had been kind in that respect. His
vision remained good.
He opened his toothless mouth. At first nothing came out. He
tried to raise a mahogany spider of a hand. He did not have the
strength.
Tobo shuffled his feet and muttered at the things in the
corners. There are ten thousand strange things infesting Hsien and
he knows every one by name. And they all worship him. For me this
intersection with the hidden world has been the most troubling
development of our stay in the Land of Unknown Shadows.
I liked them better when they were still unknown.
Outside Skryker or Black Shuck or another Black Hound began
raising a racket. Others replied. The uproar moved southward,
toward the shadowgate. I willed Tobo to go investigate.
He stayed put, all questions and nags. He was about to become a
major pain in the ass. “How’s your grandmother?”
I asked. Preemptive strike. “Why don’t you
check?” Gota was not in the room. Usually she was,
determinedly trying to do for One-Eye even though she had grown as
feeble as he was.
One-Eye made a noise, moved his head, tried to raise that hand
again. He saw the boy leave the room. His mouth opened. He managed
to force out words in little bursts. “Croaker. This is
the . . . last . . . She’s
done. I feel it. Coming. Finally.”
I did not argue with him, did not question him. My error. We had
been through similar scenes a half dozen times. His strokes were
never quite fatal. It seemed fate had some last role for him in the
grand design.
Whatever, he had to work his way through his standard soliloquy.
He had to warn me against hubris because he could not get it into
his head that not only am I no longer the Liberator, the military
dictator of all the Taglias; I have abdicated claim to captaincy of
the Black Company. The Captivity did not leave me rational enough
for that task. Nor had my understudy, Murgen, come through
sufficiently unscathed. The burden now rests upon Sleepy’s
sturdy little shoulders.
And One-Eye had to ask me to look out for Gota and Tobo. Over
and over he would remind me to watch out for Goblin’s wicked
tricks even though we had lost Goblin years ago.
I suspect that, should there be any afterlife at all, those two
will meet up about six seconds after One-Eye croaks and they will
pick up their feud right where they left it in life. In fact, I am
a little surprised Goblin has not been around haunting One-Eye. He
threatened to often enough.
Maybe Goblin just cannot find him. Some of the Nyueng Bao say
they feel lost because the shades of their ancestors cannot find
them to watch over them and give advice inside their dreams.
Kina cannot find us, either, apparently. Lady has not had a bad
dream in years.
Or maybe Goblin killed her.
One-Eye beckoned with one desiccated finger.
“Closer.”
Kneeling in front of him, opening my kit, I was about as close
as I could get. I took his wrist. His pulse was weak and rapid and
irregular. I did not get the impression that he had suffered a
stroke.
He murmured, “I am not. A fool. Who doesn’t know.
When he is. And what. Has happened. You listen! You watch out. For
Goblin. Little Girl. And Tobo. Didn’t see him dead. Left him
with. Mother of Deceit.”
“Shit!” That never occurred to me. I was not there.
I was still one of the Captured when Goblin stuck the sleeping
Goddess with the standard. Only Tobo and Sleepy had witnessed that.
And anything they knew had to be suspect. Kina was the Queen of
Deceivers. “A good idea, old man. Now, what do I have to do
to get you to get up and fetch me a drink?”
Then I started as something that looked like a small black
rabbit peeked at me from under One-Eye’s chair. This was a
new one. I could call Tobo. He would know what it was. There are
uncounted varieties of the things, huge and small, some gentle and
many definitely not. They just gravitate toward Tobo. In only a few
cases, generally involving the most disagreeable sorts, has he
taken Lady’s advice and bound them to his personal
service.
The Children of the Dead worry about Tobo. Having suffered a few
hundred years under the heels of the Shadowmasters they are
paranoid about outsider sorcerers.
So far the warlords have remained reasonable. None of them want
to spark the ire of the Soldiers of Darkness. That might cause the
Company to align itself with a rival. Status quo and balance of
force are cherished and jealously nurtured by the File of Nine.
Terrible chaos followed the expulsion of the last Shadowmaster.
None of the warlords want the chaos to return, though what Hsien
has now resembles nothing so much as lightly organized anarchy. But
not a one is willing to yield a minimum of power to another
authority, either.
One-Eye grinned, revealing dark gums. “Not going to. Trick
me. Captain.”
“I’m not the Captain anymore. I’m retired.
I’m just an old man who pushes paper as an excuse to keep
hanging around with the living. Sleepy is the boss.”
“Still. Management.”
“I’m about to manage your scruffy old
ass . . . ” I trailed off. His eye had
closed. He made a statement by beginning to snore.
Another hoot and holler arose outside, some close by, more far
away toward the shadowgate. The snail shells creaked and rustled
and, though I never saw a one touched by anything, rocked and spun
around. Then I heard the distant bray of a horn.
I rose and retreated, not turning my back. One-Eye’s lone
remaining pleasure—other than staying drunk—was tripping the unwary
with his cane.
Tobo reappeared. He looked ghastly.
“Captain . . . Croaker. Sir. I
misunderstood what he tried to tell me.”
“What?”
“It wasn’t him. It was Nana Gota.”
Boom! Boom!
Somebody hammered on my door. I glanced at Lady. She had stayed up
late last night and so had fallen asleep while studying this
evening. She was determined to discover all the secrets of Hsien
magic and to help Tobo harness the startlingly plentiful
supernatural manifestations of this world. Not that Tobo needed
much help anymore.
This world has more real phantoms and marvellous beings hiding
in the bushes and behind the rocks and trees and on the edge of
night than any twenty generations of our own frightened peasants
could imagine. They gravitate toward Tobo as though he is some sort
of nightside messiah. Or amusing pet, maybe. Boom! Boom! I would have to get off my butt myself. That looked
like a long, hard trek over there. Boom! Boom! “Come on, Croaker! Wake up!” The door
swung inward as my visitor invited himself inside. The very devil
of my thoughts.
“Tobo . . . ”
“Didn’t you hear the baobhas singing?”
“I heard a racket. Your friends are always kicking up a
fuss about something. I don’t pay any attention
anymore.”
“When the baobhas sing it means somebody is going to die.
And there’s been a cold wind off the plain all day and Big
Ears and Golden-Eye have been extremely nervous
and . . . it’s One-Eye, sir. I just went
over to talk to him. He looks like he’d had another
stroke.”
“Shit. Let me get my bag.” No surprise, One-Eye
suffering a stroke. That old fart has been trying to sneak out on
us for years. Most of the vinegar went out of him back when we lost
Goblin.
“Hurry!”
The kid loved that old shit-disturber. Sometimes it seemed like
One-Eye was what he wanted to be when he grew up. In fact, it
seemed Tobo venerated everybody but his own mother, though the
friction between them diminished as he aged. He had matured
considerably since my latest resurrection.
“I’m hurrying as fast as I can, Your Grace. This old
body doesn’t have the spring it did in the olden
days.”
“Physician, heal thyself.”
“Believe me, kid, I would if I could. If I had my druthers
I’d be twenty-three years old for the rest of my life. Which
would last another three thousand years.”
“That wind off the plain. It has Uncle worried,
too.”
“Doj is always worried about something. What does your
father say?”
“He and Mom are still at Khang Phi visiting Master
Santaraksita.”
At a tender twenty Tobo is akeady the most powerful sorcerer in
all this world. Lady says he might possibly become a match for her
in her prime. Scary. But he has parents he calls Mom and Dad still.
He has friends he treats like people, not objects. He accords his
teachers respect and honor instead of devouring them just to prove
that he is stronger. His mother raised him well, despite having
done so in the environment of the Black Company. And despite his
innate rebellious streak. I hope he will remain a decent human
being once he comes into his full powers.
My wife does not believe that is possible. She is a pessimist
about character. She insists that power corrupts. Inevitably. She
has only her own history by which to judge. And she sees only the
dark side of everything. Even so, she remains one of Tobo’s
teachers. Because, despite her bleak outlook, she retains the silly
romantic streak that brought her here with me.
I did not try to keep up with the boy. Time definitely has
slowed me. And has left me with an ache for every one of the
thousands of miles this battered old corpse has trudged. And it has
equipped me with an old man’s talent for straying off the
subject.
The boy never stopped chattering about the Black Hounds, fees,
hobs and hobyahs and other creatures of the night that I have never
seen. Which is all right. The few he has brought around have all
been ugly, smelly, surly, and all too eager to copulate with humans
of any sex or sexuality. The Children of the Dead claim that
yielding is not a good idea. So far discipline has held.
The evening was chill. Both moons were up. Little Boy was full.
The sky was totally clear except for a circling owl being pestered
by what appeared to be a brace of night-flying rooks. One of those,
in turn, had some smaller black bird skipping along behind it,
darting in and out as it prosecuted reprisals for some corvine
trangression. Or just for the hell of it, the way my sister-in-law
would do.
Likely none of the flyers were actual birds.
A huge something loomed beyond the nearest house. It made
snorting noises and shuffled away. What I made out looked vaguely
like the head of a giant duck. The earliest of the conquering
Shadowmasters had possessed a bizarre turn of humor. This big,
slow, goofy thing was a killer. Among the worst of the others were
a giant beaver, a crocodile with eight legs and a pair of arms and
many variations of the themes of killer cattle, horses and ponies,
most of which spend their daytimes hiding underwater.
The most bizarre beings were created by the nameless
Shadowmaster now recalled as the First One or the Master of Time.
His raw material had consisted of shadows off the glittering plain,
which in Hsien are known as the Host of the Unforgiven Dead. It
seems appropriate that Hsien be called the Land of Unknown
Shadows.
A long feline roar ripped the night. That would be Big Ears or
his sister Cat Sith. By the time I reached One-Eye’s place
the Black Hounds had begun to vocalize, too.
One-Eye’s house was scarcely a year old. The little
wizard’s friends raised it after they completed their own
places. Before that One-Eye and his girlfriend, Tobo’s
grandmother Gota, lived in an ugly, smelly little stick-and-mud
hut. The new place was of mortared stone. It had a first rate
thatch roof above its four large rooms, one of which concealed a
still. One-Eye might be too old and feeble to weasel his way into
the local black market but I am sure he will continue distilling
strong spirits till the moment his own spirit departs his wizened
flesh. The man is dedicated.
Gota kept the house spotless via the ancient device of bullying
her daughter Sahra into doing the housework. Gota, still called the
Troll by the old hands, was as feeble as One-Eye. They were a
matched pair in their passion for potent beverages. When One-Eye
gave up the ghost he would be drawing a gill of the hard stuff for
his honey.
Tobo poked his head back outside. “Hurry up!”
“Know who you’re talking to, boy? The former
military dictator of all the Taglias.”
The boy grinned, no more impressed than anyone else is these
days. “Used to be” is not worth the breeze on which it
is scribbled.
I tend to philosophize about that, probably a little too much.
Once upon a time I was nothing and had no ambition to be anything
more. Circumstance conspired to put immense power into my hands. I
could have ripped the guts out of half a world had that been my
inclination. But I let other obsessions drive me. So I am here on
the far side of the circle, where I started, scraping wounds,
setting bones and scribbling histories nobody is likely to read.
Only now I am a lot older and crankier. I have buried all the
friends of my youth except One-Eye . . .
I ducked into the old wizard’s house.
The heat was ferocious. One-Eye and Gota had trouble keeping
warm even in summer. Though summers in southern Hsien seldom become
hot.
I stared. “You sure he’s in trouble?”
Tobo said, “He tried to tell me something. I didn’t
understand so I came for you. I was afraid.” Him. Afraid.
One-Eye was seated in a rickety chair he had built for himself.
He was motionless but things stirred in the corners of the room,
usually only visible at the edge of my eye. Snail shells cluttered
the floor. Tobo’s father, Murgen, calls them brownies after
little folk recalled from his youth. There had to be twenty
different races of them around, from no bigger than a thumb to half
a man high. They really did do work when nobody was looking. That
drove Sleepy crazy. It meant she had to work harder to think up
chores to keep the Company’s villains out of trouble.
An overpowering stench pervaded One-Eye’s house. It came
from the mash for his still.
The devil himself looked like a shrunken head the shrinker had
not bothered to separate from its body. One-Eye was a little bit of
a thing. Even in his prime he had not been big. At two hundred and
some years old, with both legs and most of one arm in the grave, he
looked more like a shriveled monkey than a human being.
I said, “I hear tell you’re trying to get some
attention again, old man.” I knelt. One-Eye’s one eye
opened. It focused on me. Time had been kind in that respect. His
vision remained good.
He opened his toothless mouth. At first nothing came out. He
tried to raise a mahogany spider of a hand. He did not have the
strength.
Tobo shuffled his feet and muttered at the things in the
corners. There are ten thousand strange things infesting Hsien and
he knows every one by name. And they all worship him. For me this
intersection with the hidden world has been the most troubling
development of our stay in the Land of Unknown Shadows.
I liked them better when they were still unknown.
Outside Skryker or Black Shuck or another Black Hound began
raising a racket. Others replied. The uproar moved southward,
toward the shadowgate. I willed Tobo to go investigate.
He stayed put, all questions and nags. He was about to become a
major pain in the ass. “How’s your grandmother?”
I asked. Preemptive strike. “Why don’t you
check?” Gota was not in the room. Usually she was,
determinedly trying to do for One-Eye even though she had grown as
feeble as he was.
One-Eye made a noise, moved his head, tried to raise that hand
again. He saw the boy leave the room. His mouth opened. He managed
to force out words in little bursts. “Croaker. This is
the . . . last . . . She’s
done. I feel it. Coming. Finally.”
I did not argue with him, did not question him. My error. We had
been through similar scenes a half dozen times. His strokes were
never quite fatal. It seemed fate had some last role for him in the
grand design.
Whatever, he had to work his way through his standard soliloquy.
He had to warn me against hubris because he could not get it into
his head that not only am I no longer the Liberator, the military
dictator of all the Taglias; I have abdicated claim to captaincy of
the Black Company. The Captivity did not leave me rational enough
for that task. Nor had my understudy, Murgen, come through
sufficiently unscathed. The burden now rests upon Sleepy’s
sturdy little shoulders.
And One-Eye had to ask me to look out for Gota and Tobo. Over
and over he would remind me to watch out for Goblin’s wicked
tricks even though we had lost Goblin years ago.
I suspect that, should there be any afterlife at all, those two
will meet up about six seconds after One-Eye croaks and they will
pick up their feud right where they left it in life. In fact, I am
a little surprised Goblin has not been around haunting One-Eye. He
threatened to often enough.
Maybe Goblin just cannot find him. Some of the Nyueng Bao say
they feel lost because the shades of their ancestors cannot find
them to watch over them and give advice inside their dreams.
Kina cannot find us, either, apparently. Lady has not had a bad
dream in years.
Or maybe Goblin killed her.
One-Eye beckoned with one desiccated finger.
“Closer.”
Kneeling in front of him, opening my kit, I was about as close
as I could get. I took his wrist. His pulse was weak and rapid and
irregular. I did not get the impression that he had suffered a
stroke.
He murmured, “I am not. A fool. Who doesn’t know.
When he is. And what. Has happened. You listen! You watch out. For
Goblin. Little Girl. And Tobo. Didn’t see him dead. Left him
with. Mother of Deceit.”
“Shit!” That never occurred to me. I was not there.
I was still one of the Captured when Goblin stuck the sleeping
Goddess with the standard. Only Tobo and Sleepy had witnessed that.
And anything they knew had to be suspect. Kina was the Queen of
Deceivers. “A good idea, old man. Now, what do I have to do
to get you to get up and fetch me a drink?”
Then I started as something that looked like a small black
rabbit peeked at me from under One-Eye’s chair. This was a
new one. I could call Tobo. He would know what it was. There are
uncounted varieties of the things, huge and small, some gentle and
many definitely not. They just gravitate toward Tobo. In only a few
cases, generally involving the most disagreeable sorts, has he
taken Lady’s advice and bound them to his personal
service.
The Children of the Dead worry about Tobo. Having suffered a few
hundred years under the heels of the Shadowmasters they are
paranoid about outsider sorcerers.
So far the warlords have remained reasonable. None of them want
to spark the ire of the Soldiers of Darkness. That might cause the
Company to align itself with a rival. Status quo and balance of
force are cherished and jealously nurtured by the File of Nine.
Terrible chaos followed the expulsion of the last Shadowmaster.
None of the warlords want the chaos to return, though what Hsien
has now resembles nothing so much as lightly organized anarchy. But
not a one is willing to yield a minimum of power to another
authority, either.
One-Eye grinned, revealing dark gums. “Not going to. Trick
me. Captain.”
“I’m not the Captain anymore. I’m retired.
I’m just an old man who pushes paper as an excuse to keep
hanging around with the living. Sleepy is the boss.”
“Still. Management.”
“I’m about to manage your scruffy old
ass . . . ” I trailed off. His eye had
closed. He made a statement by beginning to snore.
Another hoot and holler arose outside, some close by, more far
away toward the shadowgate. The snail shells creaked and rustled
and, though I never saw a one touched by anything, rocked and spun
around. Then I heard the distant bray of a horn.
I rose and retreated, not turning my back. One-Eye’s lone
remaining pleasure—other than staying drunk—was tripping the unwary
with his cane.
Tobo reappeared. He looked ghastly.
“Captain . . . Croaker. Sir. I
misunderstood what he tried to tell me.”
“What?”
“It wasn’t him. It was Nana Gota.”