Shadow Games

Chapter Four The dark Tower

I piddled around another five days before working myself up to a little after-breakfast skull session. I introduced the subject in a golden-tongued blurt: “Our next stopover will be the Tower.”

“What?”

“Are you crazy, Croaker?”

“Knew we should have kept an eye on him after the sun went down.” Knowing glances Lady’s way. She stayed out of it.

“I thought she was going with us. Not the other way around.”

Only Murgen did not snap up a membership in the bitch-of-the-minute club. Good lad, that Murgen.

Lady, of course, already knew a stopover was needed.

“I’m serious, guys,” I said.

If I wanted to be serious, One-Eye would be, too. “Why?” he asked.

I sort of shrank. “To pick up the Annals I left behind at Queen’s Bridge.” We got caught good, there. Only because we were the best, and desperate, and sneaky, had we been able to crack the imperial encirclement. At the cost of half the Company. There were more important concerns at the time than books.

“I thought you already got them.”

“I asked for them and was told I could have them. But we were busy at the time. Remember? The Doroinator? The Limper? Toadkiller Dog? All that lot? There wasn’t any chance to actually lay hands on them.”

Lady supported me with a nod. Getting really into the spirit, there.

Goblin pasted on his most ferocious face. Made him look like a saber-toothed toad. “Then you knew about this clean back before we ever left the Barrowland.”

I admitted that that was true.

“You goatfu-Lover. I bet you’ve spent all this time concocting some half-assed off-the-wall plan that’s guaranteed to get us all killed.”

I confessed that that was mostly true, too. “We’re going to ride up there like we own the Tower. You’re going to make the garrison think Lady is still number one.”

One-Eye snorted, stomped off to the horses. Goblin got up and stared down at me. And stared some more. And sneered. “We’re just going to strut in and snatch them, eh? Like the Old Man used to say, audacity and more audacity.” He did not ask his real question.

Lady answered it for him, anyway. “I gave my word.”

Goblin did not mouth the next question, either. No one did. And Lady left it hanging.

It would be easy for her to job us. She could keep her word and have us for breakfast afterward. If she wanted.

My plan (sic), boiled down, depended entirely on my trust in her. It was a trust my comrades did not share.

But they do, however foolishly, trust me.

The Tower at Charm is the largest single construction in the world, a featureless black cube five hundred feet to the dimension. It was the first project undertaken by the Lady and the Taken after their return from the grave, so many lifetimes ago. From the Tower the Taken had marched forth, and raised their armies, and conquered half the world. Its shadow still fell upon half the earth, for few knew that the heart and blood of the empire had been sacrificed to buy victory over a power older and darker still.

There is but one ground-level entrance to the Tower. The road leading to it runs as straight as a geometrician’s dream. It passes through parklike grounds that only someone who had been there could believe was the site of history’s bloodiest battle.

I had been there. I remembered.

Goblin and One-Eye and Hagop and Otto remembered, too. Most of all, One-Eye remembered. It was on this plain that he destroyed the monster that had murdered his brother.

I recalled the crash and tumult, the screams and terrors, the horrors wrought by wizards at war, and not for the first time I wondered, “Did they really all die here? They went so easily.”

“Who you talking about?” One-Eye demanded. He did not need to concentrate on keeping Lady englamored.

“The Taken. Sometimes I think about how hard it was to get rid of the Limper. Then I wonder how so many Taken could have gone down so easy, a whole bunch in a couple days, almost never where I could see it. So sometimes I get to suspecting there was maybe some faking and two or three are still around somewhere.”

Goblin squeaked, “But they had six different plots going, Croaker. They was all backstabbing each other.”

“But I only saw a couple of them check out. None of you guys saw the others go. You heard about it. Maybe there was one more plot behind all the other plots. Maybe ...”

Lady gave me an odd, almost speculative look, like maybe she had not thought much about it herself and did not like the ideas I stirred now.

“They died dead enough for me, Croaker,” One-Eye said. “I saw plenty of bodies. Look over there. Their graves are marked.”

“That don’t mean there’s anybody in them. Raven died on us twice. Turn around and there he was again. On the hoof.”

Lady said, “You have my permission to dig them up if you like, Croaker.”

A glance showed me she was chiding me gently. Maybe even teasing. “That’s all right. Maybe someday when I’m good and bored and got nothing better to do than look at rotten corpses.”

“Gah!” Murgen said. “Can’t you guys talk about something else?” Which was a mistake.

Otto laughed. Hagop started humming. To his tune Otto sang, “The worms crawl in, the worms crawl out, the ants play the bagpipes on your snout.” Goblin and One-Eye joined in. Murgen threatened to ride over and puke on somebody.

We were distracting ourselves from the dark promise looming ahead.

One-Eye stopped singing to say, “None of the Taken were the sort who could lie low all these years, Croaker. If any survived we would have seen the fireworks. Me and Goblin would have heard something, anyway.”

“I guess you’re right.” But I did not feel reassured. Maybe some part of me just did not want the Taken to be all dead.

We were approaching the incline that led up to the doorway into the Tower. For the first time the structure betrayed signs of life. Men clad as brightly as peacocks appeared on the high battlements. A handful came out of the gateway, hastily preparing a ceremonial in greeting to their mistress. One-Eye hooted derisively when he saw their apparel.

He would not have dared last time he was there.

I leaned over and whispered, “Be careful. She designed the uniforms on them guys.”

I hoped they wanted to greet the Lady, hoped they had nothing more sinister in mind. That depended on what news they had had from the north. Sometimes evil rumors travel swifter than the wind.

“Audacity, guys,” I said. “Always audacity. Be bold. Be arrogant. Keep them reeling.” I looked at that dark entrance and reflected aloud, “They know me here.”

“That’s what scares me,” Goblin squeaked. Then he cackled.

The Tower filled more and more of the world. Murgen, who’d never seen it before, surrendered to openmouthed awe. Otto and Hagop pretended that that stone pile did not impress them. Goblin and One-Eye became too busy to pay much attention. Lady could not be impressed. She had built the place when she was someone both greater and smaller than the person she was now.

I became totally involved in creating the persona I wanted to project. I recognized the colonel in charge of the welcoming party. We had crossed paths when my fortunes had led me into the Tower before. Our feelings toward one another were ambiguous at best.

He recognized me, too. And he was baffled. The Lady and I had left the Tower together, most of a year ago.

“How you doing, Colonel?” I asked, putting on a big, friendly grin. “We finally made it back. Mission successful.”

He glanced at Lady. I did the same, from the edge of my eye. Now was her chance.

She had on her most arrogant face. I could have sworn she was the devil who haunted this Tower-Well, she was. Once. That person did not die when she lost her powers. Did she?

It looked like she would play my game. I sighed, closed my eyes momentarily, while the Tower Guard welcomed their liege.

I trusted her. But always there are reservations. You cannot predict other people. Especially not the hopeless.

Always there was the chance she might reassume the empire, hiding in her secret part of the Tower, letting her minions believe she was unchanged. There was nothing to stop her trying.

She could go that route even after keeping her promise to return the Annals.

That, my companions believed, was what she would do. And they dreaded her first order as empress of shadow restored.