Golden caverns
where old men sat beside the way, frozen in time, immortal but
unable to move an eyelid. Madmen they, some covered with fairy webs
of ice as though a thousand winter spiders had spun threads of
frozen water. Above, an enchanted forest of icicles grew downward
from the cavern roof.
So Murgen described it once upon a time, decades ago. The
description remained apt, though the light was not as golden as I
expected and the delicate filigrees of ice were denser and more
complex. The old men seated against the walls, caught up in the
webs, were not the wide-eyed madmen of Murgen’s visions,
though. They were dead. Or asleep. I did not see one open eye. Nor
did I see one face I recognized.
“Willow. Who are these people?” The bitter wind
continued to rush through the cavern, which was a dozen feet high
and nearly as wide, with a relatively flat floor, side to side.
It sloped with the length of the cavern. It looked like ancient,
frozen mud covered with a pelt of fine frost fur. Water had run
through the cavern in some epoch before the coming of men.
“These ones? I don’t know. They were here when we
came down.”
I leaned closer but was careful not to touch. “These caves
are natural.”
“They have that look.”
“Then they’ve been down here all along. They were
here before the plain was built.”
“Possibly. Probably.”
“And whoever buried Kina knew about them. So did the
Deceivers chased here by Rhaydreynak. Hunh! This one is definitely
deceased. Naturally mummified but definitely gone.” The
corpse was all dried out. Bare bone showed at a folded knee and
tattered elbow. “These others? Who knows? Maybe the right
sorcery could get them up and running around like Iqbal’s
kids.”
“Why would we get them up? We’re here to get the
guys that me and Catcher buried. Right? They’re on up
there.” He pointed upslope, where the light was even less
golden, becoming almost an icy blue.
The light was not bright. Not nearly so much so as in the vision
I had experienced. Maybe it was more a psychic witchlight than a
physical one, more suited to the dreamwalker’s eye. I mused,
“They might be able to tell us something
interesting.”
“I’ll tell you something interesting,” Swan
muttered to himself. In a normal voice, for my benefit, he said,
“I don’t think so. At least I don’t think it
would be anything any of us would want to hear. Catcher took
extreme pains to avoid even touching them. Getting the captives
past without disturbing them was the hardest work we
did.”
I bent to examine another of the old men. He did not look like
he belonged to any race I knew. “They must be from one of the
other worlds.”
“Maybe. There’s a saying where I grew up: ‘Let
sleeping’ dogs lie.’ Sounds like exquisitely
appropriate advice. We don’t know why they were put down
here.”
“I have no intention of releasing any deviltry but our
own. These men here aren’t the same as those.”
“There were several different groups last time. I doubt
that that’s changed. I got the feeling that they were dumped
here at different times. See how much less ice there is around
these guys? Makes me think it takes centuries to
accumulate.”
“Ow!”
“What?”
“I banged my head on this damned rock icicle
thing.”
“Hmm. I must’ve overlooked it somehow.”
“Get smart and I’ll punch you in the kneecap, Lofty.
Does it feel like it’s colder in here than it ought to
be?” It was not my imagination and not the icy wind,
either.
“Always.” His grin had gone away. “It’s
them. I think. Starting to realize somebody’s here. It keeps
building up. It can get on your nerves if you pay any attention to
it.”
I could feel the growth of whatever it was. Insanity becoming
palpable, I suppose. That was the impression, anyway.
“How come we’re able to move around in here?”
I asked. “Why aren’t we frozen?”
“We’d probably end up that way if we stayed long
enough to fall asleep. These people all had to be unconscious when
they were brought down here.”
“Really?” We were up where there was less ice. The
frost on the floor still betrayed the tracks left by Soulcatcher
and Willow Swan years ago. The old men here were different. They
resembled Nyueng Bao, except for one, who had been tall, thin and
extremely pale. “But they don’t stay asleep?”
Several pairs of open eyes seemed to track me. I hoped it was my
imagination, stimulated by the spookiness of the cave. I never
actually saw any movement.
Footsteps.
I jumped hip-high to a short elephant before I realized that it
had to be Sahra and the Radisha and whoever else had decided not to
participate in all those exciting projects that were underway
upstairs. “Go keep those people from stomping in here and
messing everything up. I’ll get an idea of the layout and try
to figure out what we’ll have to do.”
Swan scowled and growled and grunted, then minced carefully back
down the slight slope toward the stairwell. He talked to himself
all the way. And I did not blame him. Even I thought nothing ever
went right for him.
I took a step in the direction the old footprints led. My boots
went out from under me. I hit hard, then slid downhill until I
caught up with Swan, who did a convincing job of acting amused
after he stopped me. “You all right?”
“Bruised my side. Hurt my wrist.”
“I shoulda told you. That floor can be pretty slippery
where there’s a lot of frost.”
“You’re lucky I don’t swear.”
“Uhm?”
“You forgot on purpose. You’re as bad as One-Eye or
Goblin.”
“Did I just hear my name taken in vain?”
One-Eye’s voice, punctuated by rasping panting more suitable
to a lunger, came from the shadows down where the stair intercepted
the cavern.
“God is Great, God is Good. God is the All-Knowing and
All-Merciful. His Plan is Hidden but Just.” And save me from
the Mystery of His Plan because all I ever get is the Misery of His
Plan. “What is he doing down here?” I asked Swan.
“I know. I’ll leave him behind. I know I’m
definitely not going to carry him up out of here just so he
doesn’t suffer another stroke from the effort. Hit him over
the head when he isn’t looking.” I began moving deeper
into the cave again. “I’m going to try this one more
time.” Beneath my breath I continued my conversation with
God. As usual, He did not trouble Himself to defend His Works to
me. My fault for being a woman.
I nearly missed the transition from the ancient Nyueng Bao types
to Company men because the first few modern bodies belonged to
Nyueng Bao bodyguards. I halted only when I reached and recognized
a Nyueng Bao bodyguard named Pham Quang. I studied him for a
moment.
I backed up carefully.
When you looked for it, the boundary was evident. My brothers
and their allies had several centuries’ less frost
accumulation upon them. They had only just begun to develop the
delicate webbings that encased the older bodies. That seemed
awfully fast, actually, considering how long some of the others
must have been buried. Possibly Soulcatcher had indulged in a
little artistry during her visit.
Interspersed with my brothers were several bodies so ancient
that they had become completely cocooned. I intuited them as bodies
only because the chrysalises slumped just like the Captured
did.
A thought. It might be worthwhile having One-Eye along after
all. Down here Soulcatcher might have taken time to set a trap or
two, just for the devil of it.
The Nar generals Isi and Ochiba sat against the cave wall
opposite Pham Quang. Ochiba’s eyes were open. They did not
move but did seem fixed on me. I hunkered down, got as close as I
could without touching him.
Those brown pools were moist. There was no dust on their
surfaces, nor any frost. They had opened quite recently.
A chill crawled down my spine. A very creepy feeling came over
me. I felt like I was walking among the dead. In the far north,
whence Swan came carrying travelers’ tales, some religions
supposedly pictured Hell as a cold place. My imagination, running
with the terror that my brothers’ situation sparked, had no
trouble picturing this cave as a suburb of Hell.
I rose carefully and moved away from Ochiba. Now the cave floor
was almost perfectly level. My brothers were not crowded together.
The rest seemed to be scattered along the next several hundred
feet, not all immediately visible because of a turn in the cave. A
few old cocoon men were interspersed with them. “I see the
Lance!” I announced. Which was wonderful. Now we could split
into two parties and have both retain their capacity for accessing
the plain.
My voice echoed like there was a chorus of me all talking at the
same time. Hitherto, Swan and I had tried to speak softly. The
echoes had been little more than ghostly whispers although
extremely busy even at that level.
“Keep it down,” One-Eye said. “What are you
doing, Little Girl? You don’t have any idea what you’re
dealing with here.” He had gotten past Swan somehow and was
headed my way. He was awfully damned spry for a
two-hundred-year-old stroke victim. This business had him truly
excited.
That left me suspicious. But I had no time to try reasoning out
what angle the man might have.
I looked into another pair of eyes, these belonging to a long,
bony, pallid man who had to be the sorcerer Longshadow. Longshadow
was a prisoner of the Company. He had been brought along because
neither Croaker nor Lady trusted anyone else to guard him and he
could not be exterminated because the health of the Shadowgate,
insofar as they had known, was dependent upon his continued
well-being. And well that they had been so distrustful. It would be
a much different and more terrible world if the Shadowmaster had
been left behind to tinker at whatever wickedness took his fancy.
Soulcatcher’s evil was capricious and unfocused.
Longshadow’s malice and insanity were deep and abiding.
That insanity stared out of his eyes right then. On my mental
checklist I made a tick that meant this one would stay right where
he was. Others might have plans for him but they were not in
charge. If we could work out how to strengthen our world’s
Shadowgate, maybe we could even execute him.
I continued moving, working my silent triage, constantly bemused
because there were so many faces that I did not recognize. A lot of
men who had enlisted while I was away from the center of the
action. “Oh, darn!”
“What?” One-Eye was only a few steps behind me,
gaining ground fast. His voice seemed to rattle as it echoed.
“It’s Wheezer. The stasis didn’t take for
him.”
One-Eye grunted, evidently indifferent. Old Wheezer came from
the same tribe One-Eye did, although Wheezer was more than a
century younger than the wizard. There had never been any affection
between them. “He had a better run than he deserved.”
Wheezer had been old and dying of consumption when he joined the
Company during its passage southward, decades ago. And he had
continued to survive despite his infirmities and despite all the
trials the Company had endured.
“Here’re Candles and Cletus. They’re gone,
too. And a couple of Nyueng Bao and two Shadar I don’t
recognize. Something happened here. This makes seven dead men, all
in a clump.”
“Don’t move, Little Girl. Don’t touch anything
before I have a chance to look it over.”
I froze. It was time to acknowledge his expertise.
Golden caverns
where old men sat beside the way, frozen in time, immortal but
unable to move an eyelid. Madmen they, some covered with fairy webs
of ice as though a thousand winter spiders had spun threads of
frozen water. Above, an enchanted forest of icicles grew downward
from the cavern roof.
So Murgen described it once upon a time, decades ago. The
description remained apt, though the light was not as golden as I
expected and the delicate filigrees of ice were denser and more
complex. The old men seated against the walls, caught up in the
webs, were not the wide-eyed madmen of Murgen’s visions,
though. They were dead. Or asleep. I did not see one open eye. Nor
did I see one face I recognized.
“Willow. Who are these people?” The bitter wind
continued to rush through the cavern, which was a dozen feet high
and nearly as wide, with a relatively flat floor, side to side.
It sloped with the length of the cavern. It looked like ancient,
frozen mud covered with a pelt of fine frost fur. Water had run
through the cavern in some epoch before the coming of men.
“These ones? I don’t know. They were here when we
came down.”
I leaned closer but was careful not to touch. “These caves
are natural.”
“They have that look.”
“Then they’ve been down here all along. They were
here before the plain was built.”
“Possibly. Probably.”
“And whoever buried Kina knew about them. So did the
Deceivers chased here by Rhaydreynak. Hunh! This one is definitely
deceased. Naturally mummified but definitely gone.” The
corpse was all dried out. Bare bone showed at a folded knee and
tattered elbow. “These others? Who knows? Maybe the right
sorcery could get them up and running around like Iqbal’s
kids.”
“Why would we get them up? We’re here to get the
guys that me and Catcher buried. Right? They’re on up
there.” He pointed upslope, where the light was even less
golden, becoming almost an icy blue.
The light was not bright. Not nearly so much so as in the vision
I had experienced. Maybe it was more a psychic witchlight than a
physical one, more suited to the dreamwalker’s eye. I mused,
“They might be able to tell us something
interesting.”
“I’ll tell you something interesting,” Swan
muttered to himself. In a normal voice, for my benefit, he said,
“I don’t think so. At least I don’t think it
would be anything any of us would want to hear. Catcher took
extreme pains to avoid even touching them. Getting the captives
past without disturbing them was the hardest work we
did.”
I bent to examine another of the old men. He did not look like
he belonged to any race I knew. “They must be from one of the
other worlds.”
“Maybe. There’s a saying where I grew up: ‘Let
sleeping’ dogs lie.’ Sounds like exquisitely
appropriate advice. We don’t know why they were put down
here.”
“I have no intention of releasing any deviltry but our
own. These men here aren’t the same as those.”
“There were several different groups last time. I doubt
that that’s changed. I got the feeling that they were dumped
here at different times. See how much less ice there is around
these guys? Makes me think it takes centuries to
accumulate.”
“Ow!”
“What?”
“I banged my head on this damned rock icicle
thing.”
“Hmm. I must’ve overlooked it somehow.”
“Get smart and I’ll punch you in the kneecap, Lofty.
Does it feel like it’s colder in here than it ought to
be?” It was not my imagination and not the icy wind,
either.
“Always.” His grin had gone away. “It’s
them. I think. Starting to realize somebody’s here. It keeps
building up. It can get on your nerves if you pay any attention to
it.”
I could feel the growth of whatever it was. Insanity becoming
palpable, I suppose. That was the impression, anyway.
“How come we’re able to move around in here?”
I asked. “Why aren’t we frozen?”
“We’d probably end up that way if we stayed long
enough to fall asleep. These people all had to be unconscious when
they were brought down here.”
“Really?” We were up where there was less ice. The
frost on the floor still betrayed the tracks left by Soulcatcher
and Willow Swan years ago. The old men here were different. They
resembled Nyueng Bao, except for one, who had been tall, thin and
extremely pale. “But they don’t stay asleep?”
Several pairs of open eyes seemed to track me. I hoped it was my
imagination, stimulated by the spookiness of the cave. I never
actually saw any movement.
Footsteps.
I jumped hip-high to a short elephant before I realized that it
had to be Sahra and the Radisha and whoever else had decided not to
participate in all those exciting projects that were underway
upstairs. “Go keep those people from stomping in here and
messing everything up. I’ll get an idea of the layout and try
to figure out what we’ll have to do.”
Swan scowled and growled and grunted, then minced carefully back
down the slight slope toward the stairwell. He talked to himself
all the way. And I did not blame him. Even I thought nothing ever
went right for him.
I took a step in the direction the old footprints led. My boots
went out from under me. I hit hard, then slid downhill until I
caught up with Swan, who did a convincing job of acting amused
after he stopped me. “You all right?”
“Bruised my side. Hurt my wrist.”
“I shoulda told you. That floor can be pretty slippery
where there’s a lot of frost.”
“You’re lucky I don’t swear.”
“Uhm?”
“You forgot on purpose. You’re as bad as One-Eye or
Goblin.”
“Did I just hear my name taken in vain?”
One-Eye’s voice, punctuated by rasping panting more suitable
to a lunger, came from the shadows down where the stair intercepted
the cavern.
“God is Great, God is Good. God is the All-Knowing and
All-Merciful. His Plan is Hidden but Just.” And save me from
the Mystery of His Plan because all I ever get is the Misery of His
Plan. “What is he doing down here?” I asked Swan.
“I know. I’ll leave him behind. I know I’m
definitely not going to carry him up out of here just so he
doesn’t suffer another stroke from the effort. Hit him over
the head when he isn’t looking.” I began moving deeper
into the cave again. “I’m going to try this one more
time.” Beneath my breath I continued my conversation with
God. As usual, He did not trouble Himself to defend His Works to
me. My fault for being a woman.
I nearly missed the transition from the ancient Nyueng Bao types
to Company men because the first few modern bodies belonged to
Nyueng Bao bodyguards. I halted only when I reached and recognized
a Nyueng Bao bodyguard named Pham Quang. I studied him for a
moment.
I backed up carefully.
When you looked for it, the boundary was evident. My brothers
and their allies had several centuries’ less frost
accumulation upon them. They had only just begun to develop the
delicate webbings that encased the older bodies. That seemed
awfully fast, actually, considering how long some of the others
must have been buried. Possibly Soulcatcher had indulged in a
little artistry during her visit.
Interspersed with my brothers were several bodies so ancient
that they had become completely cocooned. I intuited them as bodies
only because the chrysalises slumped just like the Captured
did.
A thought. It might be worthwhile having One-Eye along after
all. Down here Soulcatcher might have taken time to set a trap or
two, just for the devil of it.
The Nar generals Isi and Ochiba sat against the cave wall
opposite Pham Quang. Ochiba’s eyes were open. They did not
move but did seem fixed on me. I hunkered down, got as close as I
could without touching him.
Those brown pools were moist. There was no dust on their
surfaces, nor any frost. They had opened quite recently.
A chill crawled down my spine. A very creepy feeling came over
me. I felt like I was walking among the dead. In the far north,
whence Swan came carrying travelers’ tales, some religions
supposedly pictured Hell as a cold place. My imagination, running
with the terror that my brothers’ situation sparked, had no
trouble picturing this cave as a suburb of Hell.
I rose carefully and moved away from Ochiba. Now the cave floor
was almost perfectly level. My brothers were not crowded together.
The rest seemed to be scattered along the next several hundred
feet, not all immediately visible because of a turn in the cave. A
few old cocoon men were interspersed with them. “I see the
Lance!” I announced. Which was wonderful. Now we could split
into two parties and have both retain their capacity for accessing
the plain.
My voice echoed like there was a chorus of me all talking at the
same time. Hitherto, Swan and I had tried to speak softly. The
echoes had been little more than ghostly whispers although
extremely busy even at that level.
“Keep it down,” One-Eye said. “What are you
doing, Little Girl? You don’t have any idea what you’re
dealing with here.” He had gotten past Swan somehow and was
headed my way. He was awfully damned spry for a
two-hundred-year-old stroke victim. This business had him truly
excited.
That left me suspicious. But I had no time to try reasoning out
what angle the man might have.
I looked into another pair of eyes, these belonging to a long,
bony, pallid man who had to be the sorcerer Longshadow. Longshadow
was a prisoner of the Company. He had been brought along because
neither Croaker nor Lady trusted anyone else to guard him and he
could not be exterminated because the health of the Shadowgate,
insofar as they had known, was dependent upon his continued
well-being. And well that they had been so distrustful. It would be
a much different and more terrible world if the Shadowmaster had
been left behind to tinker at whatever wickedness took his fancy.
Soulcatcher’s evil was capricious and unfocused.
Longshadow’s malice and insanity were deep and abiding.
That insanity stared out of his eyes right then. On my mental
checklist I made a tick that meant this one would stay right where
he was. Others might have plans for him but they were not in
charge. If we could work out how to strengthen our world’s
Shadowgate, maybe we could even execute him.
I continued moving, working my silent triage, constantly bemused
because there were so many faces that I did not recognize. A lot of
men who had enlisted while I was away from the center of the
action. “Oh, darn!”
“What?” One-Eye was only a few steps behind me,
gaining ground fast. His voice seemed to rattle as it echoed.
“It’s Wheezer. The stasis didn’t take for
him.”
One-Eye grunted, evidently indifferent. Old Wheezer came from
the same tribe One-Eye did, although Wheezer was more than a
century younger than the wizard. There had never been any affection
between them. “He had a better run than he deserved.”
Wheezer had been old and dying of consumption when he joined the
Company during its passage southward, decades ago. And he had
continued to survive despite his infirmities and despite all the
trials the Company had endured.
“Here’re Candles and Cletus. They’re gone,
too. And a couple of Nyueng Bao and two Shadar I don’t
recognize. Something happened here. This makes seven dead men, all
in a clump.”
“Don’t move, Little Girl. Don’t touch anything
before I have a chance to look it over.”
I froze. It was time to acknowledge his expertise.