She Is The Darkness

9

I did not wait long after Thai Dei and I took up quarters in one of the same buildings we had occupied during the siege. Reconstruction had not reached that part of town yet. Some of the old litter still lay around. "At least they got rid of all the bones," I told Thai Dei.

He grunted, looked around like he expected to see ghosts.

"You be all right here?" I asked. Nyueng Bao do believe in ghosts and spirits and ancestors who follow you around nagging if you have not gotten them buried properly. A lot of Nyueng Bao pilgrims passed over here without benefit of the appropriate ceremonies.

"I must be. I must have everything ready when Doj comes."

That was a major speech for Thai Dei.

Uncle Doj was a priest of some sort. Presumably he would take this opportunity to complete what he had not had time to do four years ago.

"You go ahead. I have things to do." Far places to see. Pain to be given the slip, though I did not admit that directly even to myself.

Thai Dei started to put his few possessions aside.

"No. It's more of that secret Company stuff that I'm expected to do alone."

Thai Dei grunted, almost pleased to have his time be his own.

It always was his but he would not listen when I insisted he did not owe me. If it were not for me he would not have lost his sister and son.

Arguing with a Nyueng Bao is like arguing with water buffalo. You cannot get through and after a while the Nyueng Bao loses interest in listening. Might as well save your energy.

"Wondered how long it would be," One-Eye said when I tracked him down. He had brought the wagon into our old part of town but had not taken Smoke out. He had it backed into a tight alleyway where, I presumed, the wagon would vanish inside camouflaging spells as soon as he dealt with his team.

"Unhitch them animals, Kid, and get them over to the transient stable while I straighten up here."

Arguing with One-Eye gets to be a little like arguing with Nyueng Bao. He goes completely deaf. He did so in this instance. He went about his business exactly as though I was not there. In the interest of efficiency I took care of the animals.

I believe I did a little grumbling about wishing Goblin was back.

That little toad of a wizard Goblin is One-Eye's best friend and worst enemy. He was so hard to find I thought, at first, that I was having trouble getting Smoke to understand what I wanted to do. Then I tried going back to where I had seen him last, in the river delta on the edge of Nyueng Bao country. My plan was to follow him forward in time to where he was now. And that worked just fine till Goblin's ship entered a fog bank and never came out again.

Smoke could not find him.

It took me a while to comprehend that Smoke might have been primed to shy away from what Goblin was doing. Maybe to keep One-Eye from finding out and interfering. It would be just like the little shit to blow a whole operation because he did not think before pulling some nasty practical joke on his friend.

I did some experimenting. Sure enough, Smoke had been given some special instructions. The Old Man had not given up visiting him completely.

Once I knew that, I had little difficulty getting past Croaker's safeguards. I fear One-Eye would have had little more trouble.

I found Goblin standing on a sandy beach far down the uncharted coast of the Shindai Kus, a terrible desert that fills a vast chunk of land between the northern and southern regions of the Shadowlands. The impassable mountains called the Dandha Presh only get shorter out there before they finally wade into the ocean.

Goblin was looking out to sea. A ship rode her anchor inshore. Boats were plunging in the surf. Goblin was yammering a litany of complaints. From the faces of his companions it was safe to guess that they had heard it all before.

What the hell was Goblin doing out there on that bleak coast?

I dropped back in time to listen in from the beginning.

Goblin was tormented by hatreds. So what does the Captain do? He sends nobody else but Goblin himself off to chart the unknown coast. Goblin hated swamps. So naturally the first leg of the journey took him downriver through the delta, which was one huge swamp two hundred miles across, without one decent channel, obviously totally unfit for human habitation because only Nyueng Bao lived there.

Goblin hated sea travel almost as much as One-Eye did. So what did he get after cutting through the swamp, damned near building a canal to manage that? A goddamn ocean with waves taller than any self respecting tree. He hated deserts. So what did he find after he finally got his little fleet past the end of the swampy coast? Country so barren scorpions and sand fleas could not make a living there. You baked during the day and froze at night and you never got away from the sand. The wind blew it into everything. He had sand in his boots right now...

"I wasn't born for this," Goblin complained. "Nobody deserves this. Me less than most. What did I ever do to the Old Man? All right, so maybe me and One-Eye drink a little and get rowdy sometimes, but so what? It's just youthful high spirits if Sleepy does it."

Naturally he overlooked the fact that when he and One-Eye get drunk they always start squabbling and tend to begin throwing sloppily woven spells around, busting things up far worse than Sleepy ever could.

"A man has to cut loose sometimes, you know what I mean? Nobody ever gets hurt, do they?" That was not an exaggeration, that was an outright fabrication. "Hell, in a world where there was any shred of justice I'd be retired somewhere where the wine is sweet and the girls appreciate a man with experience. I gave the Company the best centuries of my life."

Goblin hated being in charge. That meant having to think and make decisions. And it meant taking responsibility. Goblin hated all those things, too. He just wanted to cruise through life doing only what was necessary to get by while somebody else did the thinking and made the decisions.

Goblin hated hard work, too, and in this desert everybody was going to have to bust ass to stay alive.

I had Smoke take me up high, with the eagles had any been able to survive out there to see what had Goblin so excited.

He had not exaggerated about the desert.

Near the coast the Shindai Kus was all golden sand. The surf brought that in from the deep. Continuous gales carried that sand inland, using it to scour the skin off hills that, as they grew up and marched to the east, became the Dandha Presh. On the coast few of the hills stood more than a hundred feet above the sand. None of those showed the least sign of water erosion. It had not rained there for a thousand years.

I started to descend. Goblin and two others were walking inland slowly, testing the surface. Something exploded out of the sand ahead. An impossible something. A monster that could not exist in this world, a devil thing the size of an elephant but with more legs and hair than a tarantula plus some squidlike tentacles and a scorpion's tail thrown in for good measure. It staggered around groggily. Obviously it had lain there a long time, awaiting the footsteps that called it forth.

Goblin's companions fled. The little wizard cursed and said, "Another thing I hate is things that jump up out of the sand." While the monster was still woozy he hit it with some of his best stuff.

Something like a yard wide, a three legged stained glass throwing star appeared in his hand. He used it like a throwing star. The monster bellowed in outrage as the star clipped a couple tentacles and several legs off its right side. It tried to charge Goblin, who elected for the better part of valor and hauled ass.

The monster sort of dragged itself around in a big circle, leaving ruts in the golden sand. It lost interest in the men on the beach. For a while it tried to put its severed limbs back on but the graft would not take. Finally, it just sort of shuddered fatalistically and began to dig itself back down into the sand with the limbs it still had.

"And another thing," Goblin complained, "I hate the whole concept of the Shaded Road."

Shaded Road was some secret project kept from me because I had had no need to know. I had overheard the name mentioned once or twice.

"I'm even beginning to wonder how much I like Croaker. This shit is pure insanity. I hope the son of a bitch gets to spend his afterlife in a place like this."

No more need to check up on Goblin. He was fine. Like any good soldier, if he was bitching he was perfectly all right.

I went back to Dejagore.

I came back into myself inside One-Eye's wagon. I was starving and thirsty. Smoke smelled bad. "One-Eye! I have to get something to eat. Where's the transients' mess?"

The little black man stuck his disgusting hat into the wagon. I could barely make out his equally ugly face. It must be getting dark out already.

"For us it's in the citadel."

"Isn't that wonderful. Maybe I won't eat the meat." Mogaba and his cronies, still on our side then, had sat out the siege in the citadel, dining on the occasional hapless citizen of Jaicur.

"Pretend it's chicken, it ain't so bad," One-Eye said, just to turn my stomach. His nose wrinkled. "Smells in here."

"I told you. You'd better get him cleaned up."

He tried out his baleful stare. It did not work. I said, "You have to live with him."