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 team.
Even Lady was little more than a hodcarrier on this job. But
hodcarriers are needed, too.
“Thanks for the compliment,” Tobo said after I tried
out my similes. “But I’m mostly doing embroidery and
plain old-fashioned knot tying on broken threads. Parts of this
tapestry were plain outright crippled. It’ll never be
completely right, even if it’s stronger than when it
started.”
“But you can weasel Longshadow’s booby trap out of
there?”
“It’s kind of like lancing a boil and cleaning it
out, but yes. He actually made a pretty crude job of it. Obviously,
he didn’t know much about shadowgates. He did know that there
was no one in our world who knew more. What he didn’t
understand was that there were more keys.”
“Of course he knew,” I said. “That’s why
he sent Ashutosh Yaksha, his apprentice, to infiltrate the Nyueng
Bao priests at the temple of Ghanghesha.”
Tobo looked puzzled, like he did not recall that story.
“He knew they had a key there and he wanted it. So he
could get back to Hsien. If you don’t know that story
you’d better corner your uncle. Because that’s what he
told Sleepy.”
Tobo smiled weakly. “Well, maybe. I suppose.”
“What do you mean, you suppose?”
Lady paused what she was doing. “Don’t play
Doj’s games, Tobo. You won’t be fooling anybody. I was
there. Inside the white crow. I know what the man said.”
“That’s probably it. Doj told Sleepy a bunch of
stories. Some were probably true but some he probably made up.
Stuff he thought might be true because it sounded plausible based
on what he did know. Master Santaraksita spent years searching the
records at Khang Phi. The history of our world’s Nyueng Bao
isn’t much like what Doj might’ve wanted you to
believe.”
“Which was it?” I mused aloud. “Was he lying
or making it up?” I have known plenty of people who would not
admit ignorance even in the most obvious circumstance.
Tobo said, “Master Santaraksita says our ancestors left
Hsien as fugitives, sneaking out like snakes using a secretly
manufactured key. They were trying to get away from the
Shadowmasters. There was supposed to be a regular, gradual
evacuation across the plain. Because they were persecuted followers
of Khadi they did favor the organizational structure we’ve
seen in other bands of believers but those people weren’t
mercenaries and they weren’t missionaries. They weren’t
a Free Company. They weren’t a band of Stranglers. They were
just running away because the Shadowmasters insisted they had to
give up their religion. Master Santaraksita says their priests
probably made up a more dramatic history after they’d been
settled in the river delta for a while. After several generations
spent wandering. Before they arrived the only people in the swamp
were Taglian fugitives and criminals and a few remote descendants
of the Deceivers Rhaydreynek tried to wipe out. Maybe the Nyueng
Bao wanted to impress them.”
Tobo’s hands never stopped moving while he talked. But
their movements had nothing to do with what he was saying. He was
mending things that I could not see.
“How much did Doj lie?” I was determined to pin that
on him. I never did trust that old man.
“That’s the intriguing part. I don’t know. I
don’t think he really knows. He did tell me that a lot of
what he told Sleepy originally he said just because it sounded
believable and like something she wanted to hear. When you get
right down to it, except for his skill with Ash Wand, Uncle Doj is
a bigger fraud than most priests. Most priests actually believe
what they preach.”
Lady said, “Sounds like he’s spent time hanging
around with Blade.”
Tobo continued, “The key my ancestors used to cross the
plain was created secretly in Khang Phi. It went back to Hsien so
the next group of fugitives could use it. They never got the
chance.”
“But they had the golden pick.” Which was the key
that Sleepy eventually found and used to get onto the plain so she
could release us Captured from underneath Shivetya’s
fortress.
“That must have been the key that belonged to the
Deceivers who hid the Books of the Dead back in
Rhaydreynek’s time. They must’ve hidden the pickax
under the temple of Ghanghesha. The temple has a long history. It
started out as a Janaka shrine. The Gunni took over and used it as
a retreat. Then the survivors of Rhaydreynek’s pogrom chased
the Gunni out. But they faded away. Nyueng Bao folklore talks about
bitter fighting over doctrine in the early days. A century later
Gunni holy men from the cult of Ghanghesha began to come back to
the swamp. Eventually most Nyueng Bao forgot Khadi and adopted
Ghanghesha. A few generations back the pick turned up when the
temple was being repaired. Somebody realized that it had to be an
important relic. It wasn’t till more recent times, when
Longshadow, and later Soulcatcher, found out about it, that anyone
realized how important it had to be.”
“What about the pilgrimages?”
“Originally people from Hsien were supposed to meet our
people at the shadowgate with news from home and more refugees. But
the Shadowmasters found out. Plus on this side my ancestors lost
touch with the past. Contrary to legend, and unlike the way things
are now, there wasn’t that much pressure from outside.
Hanging on to old ways and old ideas wasn’t that important a
way to maintain the identity of the Nyueng Bao.
“Whatever Doj says, most Nyueng Bao aren’t devoted
to tradition and keeping the old ways. Most don’t remember
anything anymore. You saw that while we were in Hsien. The Nyueng
Bao aren’t anything like those people over there.”
Lady and I exchanged looks. Neither of us assumed Tobo was
telling any more of the truth than Doj ever had. Though the boy was
not necessarily lying consciously. I glanced at Thai Dei. He gave
nothing away.
I said, “I’ve been wondering why Doj never found any
Path of the Sword guys over there.”
“That’s easy. The Shadowmasters wiped them out. They
were the warrior caste. They kept fighting till there weren’t
any of them left.”
I had, for years, wondered why a sword-worshipping cult would be
part of a people descended from a band of worshippers of Kina, who,
in my world, did not believe in shedding blood. I still did not
know. But now I knew that nobody else was likely to know,
either.
I told Lady, “I’m surprised Sleepy never picked up
on the fact that the supposed priest of this Nyueng Bao band went
around carving people into steaks.”
“Deceiver people at that,” she added. “He
slaughtered them by the score at Charandaprash.”
Tobo is a clever young man. He understood that we did not find
his version of history more convincing than Doj’s.
I still was not sure whether he believed what he was saying.
It did not matter.
Lady poked me. She whispered, “Murgen and Willow Swan have
drawn my attention to an interesting phenomenon. You’ll want
to see for yourself. Tobo, drop doing what you’re doing and
look at this, too.”
By then I knew it would be something I did not want to see. Thai
Dei, Murgen and the others were debating the best places to take
cover already.
I turned. Lady pointed. A trio of Voroshk flyers, appearing only
slightly larger than dots, hovered above the rim of the plain. They
were way up high and a long way away, motionless.
I asked, “Anybody want to guess how well they can see
us?”
Lady said, “They can tell we’re here but
that’s it. Unless they have a farseeing device.”
“What’re they doing?”
“Scouting around, I imagine. Now that their gate is
gone they can get onto the plain whenever they want. During the day
they’re safe as long as they stay off the ground. And they
probably won’t have much trouble with shadows even at night
if they stay high up. We’ve never seen shadows go higher than
ten or fifteen feet above the surface of the shielding.”
“Think they’re looking for us? Or are they just
looking?”
“Both, probably. They’ll want revenge. And maybe
even a safe new world.”
The Voroshk did not move while we were talking. I pictured
similar trios ranging to all points of the plain, perhaps hoping
they could open the way without us. “Tobo, can they get off
of the plain?”
“I don’t know. They won’t be able to here. Not
without one of my keys. I’ll install something that’ll
kill them if they try.”
I admired his confidence. “Suppose they have somebody as
slick as you are? What’s to keep him from undoing your spells
the way you’re undoing Longshadow’s?”
“Lack of training. Lack of the knowledge we got out of
Khang Phi. You have to know a little about these things to redo
them.”
Lady asked, “Can they break through the gateway into
Hsien?” The knowledge was there.
“I don’t know. They got the forvalaka through. Maybe
they could shove their own people through on a slow, one-at-a-time
basis. They never tried before. But they’ve never been
desperate before. And time isn’t on their side.”
“What about Shivetya? What’s his take on
this?”
“I’ll find out. I’ll send a messenger in just
a minute.”
One of the soldiers from Hsien—Panda Man, I think—asked,
“What about the men with Longshadow? If he hasn’t left
the plain. One is my cousin.”
Tobo drew a long, deep breath. “My work is never
done.”
Lady said, “If you’re going to do something
you’d better do it fast. They have a key. It’s at
risk.”
“Damn! You’re right. Captain, I’m going to
borrow your ravens. Lady, lean out the gate and yell for Big Ears
and Cat Sith. They’ll hear you. Tell them I want them.
It’s an emergency.”
“One damned thing after another,” I grumbled.
“It never lets up.”
“But you’re alive,” Swan said.
“Don’t you be jumping around on the other side of
your own argument.” We amused ourselves with some
good-natured bickering while Tobo sent supernatural messengers off
to Shivetya, the guards at the Hsien shadowgate,
Longshadow’s keepers, and our folks up north.
Along the way Murgen asked his son, “What’s to keep
those jokers up there from just flying off the plain? I remember
times when crows came and went.” And he used to do so
himself, all the time.
“They could do that because they come from our world.
Crows from any other world we wouldn’t have seen at all. Even
if they were there. Yes. The Voroshk can fly out any time they
want. But when they do they’ll end up in Khatovar. Every
time. If they want to get off the plain into another world
they’ll have to come onto it through their shadowgate and
leave it through another shadowgate. Shivetya restructured it that
way.”
It can be confusing. I guess that happens where realities
overlap, with a deathless demigod in the middle who feels compelled
to make it hard for the human species to realize its darkest
potential.
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 team.
Even Lady was little more than a hodcarrier on this job. But
hodcarriers are needed, too.
“Thanks for the compliment,” Tobo said after I tried
out my similes. “But I’m mostly doing embroidery and
plain old-fashioned knot tying on broken threads. Parts of this
tapestry were plain outright crippled. It’ll never be
completely right, even if it’s stronger than when it
started.”
“But you can weasel Longshadow’s booby trap out of
there?”
“It’s kind of like lancing a boil and cleaning it
out, but yes. He actually made a pretty crude job of it. Obviously,
he didn’t know much about shadowgates. He did know that there
was no one in our world who knew more. What he didn’t
understand was that there were more keys.”
“Of course he knew,” I said. “That’s why
he sent Ashutosh Yaksha, his apprentice, to infiltrate the Nyueng
Bao priests at the temple of Ghanghesha.”
Tobo looked puzzled, like he did not recall that story.
“He knew they had a key there and he wanted it. So he
could get back to Hsien. If you don’t know that story
you’d better corner your uncle. Because that’s what he
told Sleepy.”
Tobo smiled weakly. “Well, maybe. I suppose.”
“What do you mean, you suppose?”
Lady paused what she was doing. “Don’t play
Doj’s games, Tobo. You won’t be fooling anybody. I was
there. Inside the white crow. I know what the man said.”
“That’s probably it. Doj told Sleepy a bunch of
stories. Some were probably true but some he probably made up.
Stuff he thought might be true because it sounded plausible based
on what he did know. Master Santaraksita spent years searching the
records at Khang Phi. The history of our world’s Nyueng Bao
isn’t much like what Doj might’ve wanted you to
believe.”
“Which was it?” I mused aloud. “Was he lying
or making it up?” I have known plenty of people who would not
admit ignorance even in the most obvious circumstance.
Tobo said, “Master Santaraksita says our ancestors left
Hsien as fugitives, sneaking out like snakes using a secretly
manufactured key. They were trying to get away from the
Shadowmasters. There was supposed to be a regular, gradual
evacuation across the plain. Because they were persecuted followers
of Khadi they did favor the organizational structure we’ve
seen in other bands of believers but those people weren’t
mercenaries and they weren’t missionaries. They weren’t
a Free Company. They weren’t a band of Stranglers. They were
just running away because the Shadowmasters insisted they had to
give up their religion. Master Santaraksita says their priests
probably made up a more dramatic history after they’d been
settled in the river delta for a while. After several generations
spent wandering. Before they arrived the only people in the swamp
were Taglian fugitives and criminals and a few remote descendants
of the Deceivers Rhaydreynek tried to wipe out. Maybe the Nyueng
Bao wanted to impress them.”
Tobo’s hands never stopped moving while he talked. But
their movements had nothing to do with what he was saying. He was
mending things that I could not see.
“How much did Doj lie?” I was determined to pin that
on him. I never did trust that old man.
“That’s the intriguing part. I don’t know. I
don’t think he really knows. He did tell me that a lot of
what he told Sleepy originally he said just because it sounded
believable and like something she wanted to hear. When you get
right down to it, except for his skill with Ash Wand, Uncle Doj is
a bigger fraud than most priests. Most priests actually believe
what they preach.”
Lady said, “Sounds like he’s spent time hanging
around with Blade.”
Tobo continued, “The key my ancestors used to cross the
plain was created secretly in Khang Phi. It went back to Hsien so
the next group of fugitives could use it. They never got the
chance.”
“But they had the golden pick.” Which was the key
that Sleepy eventually found and used to get onto the plain so she
could release us Captured from underneath Shivetya’s
fortress.
“That must have been the key that belonged to the
Deceivers who hid the Books of the Dead back in
Rhaydreynek’s time. They must’ve hidden the pickax
under the temple of Ghanghesha. The temple has a long history. It
started out as a Janaka shrine. The Gunni took over and used it as
a retreat. Then the survivors of Rhaydreynek’s pogrom chased
the Gunni out. But they faded away. Nyueng Bao folklore talks about
bitter fighting over doctrine in the early days. A century later
Gunni holy men from the cult of Ghanghesha began to come back to
the swamp. Eventually most Nyueng Bao forgot Khadi and adopted
Ghanghesha. A few generations back the pick turned up when the
temple was being repaired. Somebody realized that it had to be an
important relic. It wasn’t till more recent times, when
Longshadow, and later Soulcatcher, found out about it, that anyone
realized how important it had to be.”
“What about the pilgrimages?”
“Originally people from Hsien were supposed to meet our
people at the shadowgate with news from home and more refugees. But
the Shadowmasters found out. Plus on this side my ancestors lost
touch with the past. Contrary to legend, and unlike the way things
are now, there wasn’t that much pressure from outside.
Hanging on to old ways and old ideas wasn’t that important a
way to maintain the identity of the Nyueng Bao.
“Whatever Doj says, most Nyueng Bao aren’t devoted
to tradition and keeping the old ways. Most don’t remember
anything anymore. You saw that while we were in Hsien. The Nyueng
Bao aren’t anything like those people over there.”
Lady and I exchanged looks. Neither of us assumed Tobo was
telling any more of the truth than Doj ever had. Though the boy was
not necessarily lying consciously. I glanced at Thai Dei. He gave
nothing away.
I said, “I’ve been wondering why Doj never found any
Path of the Sword guys over there.”
“That’s easy. The Shadowmasters wiped them out. They
were the warrior caste. They kept fighting till there weren’t
any of them left.”
I had, for years, wondered why a sword-worshipping cult would be
part of a people descended from a band of worshippers of Kina, who,
in my world, did not believe in shedding blood. I still did not
know. But now I knew that nobody else was likely to know,
either.
I told Lady, “I’m surprised Sleepy never picked up
on the fact that the supposed priest of this Nyueng Bao band went
around carving people into steaks.”
“Deceiver people at that,” she added. “He
slaughtered them by the score at Charandaprash.”
Tobo is a clever young man. He understood that we did not find
his version of history more convincing than Doj’s.
I still was not sure whether he believed what he was saying.
It did not matter.
Lady poked me. She whispered, “Murgen and Willow Swan have
drawn my attention to an interesting phenomenon. You’ll want
to see for yourself. Tobo, drop doing what you’re doing and
look at this, too.”
By then I knew it would be something I did not want to see. Thai
Dei, Murgen and the others were debating the best places to take
cover already.
I turned. Lady pointed. A trio of Voroshk flyers, appearing only
slightly larger than dots, hovered above the rim of the plain. They
were way up high and a long way away, motionless.
I asked, “Anybody want to guess how well they can see
us?”
Lady said, “They can tell we’re here but
that’s it. Unless they have a farseeing device.”
“What’re they doing?”
“Scouting around, I imagine. Now that their gate is
gone they can get onto the plain whenever they want. During the day
they’re safe as long as they stay off the ground. And they
probably won’t have much trouble with shadows even at night
if they stay high up. We’ve never seen shadows go higher than
ten or fifteen feet above the surface of the shielding.”
“Think they’re looking for us? Or are they just
looking?”
“Both, probably. They’ll want revenge. And maybe
even a safe new world.”
The Voroshk did not move while we were talking. I pictured
similar trios ranging to all points of the plain, perhaps hoping
they could open the way without us. “Tobo, can they get off
of the plain?”
“I don’t know. They won’t be able to here. Not
without one of my keys. I’ll install something that’ll
kill them if they try.”
I admired his confidence. “Suppose they have somebody as
slick as you are? What’s to keep him from undoing your spells
the way you’re undoing Longshadow’s?”
“Lack of training. Lack of the knowledge we got out of
Khang Phi. You have to know a little about these things to redo
them.”
Lady asked, “Can they break through the gateway into
Hsien?” The knowledge was there.
“I don’t know. They got the forvalaka through. Maybe
they could shove their own people through on a slow, one-at-a-time
basis. They never tried before. But they’ve never been
desperate before. And time isn’t on their side.”
“What about Shivetya? What’s his take on
this?”
“I’ll find out. I’ll send a messenger in just
a minute.”
One of the soldiers from Hsien—Panda Man, I think—asked,
“What about the men with Longshadow? If he hasn’t left
the plain. One is my cousin.”
Tobo drew a long, deep breath. “My work is never
done.”
Lady said, “If you’re going to do something
you’d better do it fast. They have a key. It’s at
risk.”
“Damn! You’re right. Captain, I’m going to
borrow your ravens. Lady, lean out the gate and yell for Big Ears
and Cat Sith. They’ll hear you. Tell them I want them.
It’s an emergency.”
“One damned thing after another,” I grumbled.
“It never lets up.”
“But you’re alive,” Swan said.
“Don’t you be jumping around on the other side of
your own argument.” We amused ourselves with some
good-natured bickering while Tobo sent supernatural messengers off
to Shivetya, the guards at the Hsien shadowgate,
Longshadow’s keepers, and our folks up north.
Along the way Murgen asked his son, “What’s to keep
those jokers up there from just flying off the plain? I remember
times when crows came and went.” And he used to do so
himself, all the time.
“They could do that because they come from our world.
Crows from any other world we wouldn’t have seen at all. Even
if they were there. Yes. The Voroshk can fly out any time they
want. But when they do they’ll end up in Khatovar. Every
time. If they want to get off the plain into another world
they’ll have to come onto it through their shadowgate and
leave it through another shadowgate. Shivetya restructured it that
way.”
It can be confusing. I guess that happens where realities
overlap, with a deathless demigod in the middle who feels compelled
to make it hard for the human species to realize its darkest
potential.