She Is The Darkness

26

I wanted to sleep. I was tired despite having done so little that was physical. But when I retired to One-Eye's wagon I lay there tossing and turning. Outside Mother Gota was engaged in an endless litany of complaint. Evidently I was only a minor character in her cast of troubles. Uncle Doj was a star. Hong Tray was a star. Sahra was a star for having gone along with Hong Tray. Or for having gotten Hong Tray on her side. Witches, both of them. Thai Dei did not say much more than usual. He might have wanted to enter a fact or two but his mother never gave him the chance.

Same old same old where Mother Gota was concerned. Most of the time I did not hear her anymore. I wondered if she could be insulted into silence.

She did get me thinking about the woman I loved.

I turned and tossed and wrestled with the pain. I thought it might be getting a little less potent. And, of course, I had to worry about that. Was it right? Was it a betrayal of Sarie?

I reminded me that I am a grown man used to a hard life and should not be getting caught up in this sort of obsessing, however great a treasure Sahra had been.

I did drift off into that state where you are not entirely asleep but you are not awake, either. Where you can rewrite your dreams as you go along.

Suddenly I was back in the past, whipped through time by a gust of laughter and a mocking voice that asked me where I had been. I was not expecting this after all this time but it did not take me off guard, either. I was experienced at this sort of thing now.

Not surprised, I was not lost or disoriented. I had walked with the ghost enough to have developed some resilience. I tried to take hold just as I would have had I been out with Smoke.

The aura of amusement surrounding me gave way to startlement. I did a sort of transdimensional fast spin and right there caught a glimpse of the prime suspect, Soulcatcher, kneeling over some array of sorcerous objects near a fire somewhere in the gorsy approaches to Charandaprash. My turn to be amused. Even if I was not in control I now knew who was manipulating me.

Now, how could I put another move on her and find out why?

The laughter of crows enveloped me. Like it did not matter if I knew who was doing what.

That sounded like Soulcatcher, the way she was described in Croaker's Annals. A force for chaos, seldom giving one rat's ass what happened as long as something did.

I tried to recall where those Annals were right now. Another look at Soulcatcher might be worthwhile. Or maybe even a long heart-to-heart with the Old Man. He knew Soulcatcher better than anyone alive, her sister included. I do not believe Lady had a clue about her sister's thinking anymore. Maybe she did not care.

Maybe I was seeing things that were not there. What did I know about what Lady was thinking, really? I had not exchanged a hundred words with her in the past three years. Before that our exchanges were limited to information destined for the Annals.

The laughter of crows became the laughter of Soulcatcher. A voice said, "I do not think I want to play today after all."

A great invisible hand grabbed me and threw me into a windy darkness. I spun like a thrown walnut even though I was nothing but a dream.

I tried controlling it same as I would have had I been walking with the ghost. Once again I was able to take a measure of control. The sensation of spinning went away. As it faded a feeling of place and time returned, along with an ability to see. It was not good seeing. It was fuzzing and short range, like Hagop talked about his vision getting as he got older. But I was in a jungle. Was it familiar? It was a jungle. I have seen a few and they are all pretty much the same if you cannot see more than twenty feet clearly. Bugs out the wazoo. Muted, the screeching of a thousand birds. A couple of those were inside my circle of vision. I noted that they seemed to see me just fine. I was the reason for all the excitement.

I rotated quickly. Jungle for sure. But not short on water. A nasty black pool lay only inches from where my heels would have rested had I had any heels.

Monkeys scampered along a branch overhead, rattled by the screeching of the birds but, apparently, unable to see me. At least not at that range. One came swinging past a foot from my point of view. She saw me. She was so startled she lost her grip, shrieked in surprise, fell into the black pool, where she started hollering in terror.

The crocodile almost got her. Almost. She got out of the water an instant before the jaws snapped. Nothing like some big teeth moving fast to motivate you.

The crocodile's effort, however, betrayed it to the crocodile hunters who materialized an instant later, casting barbed spears.

Life is cruel.

Those crocodile hunters were unusually nervous. They wondered why the birds were going crazy. They wondered why the monkeys had gone berserk, why one had fallen into the black pool. Understanding them was no problem. They spoke Nyueng Bao as though it was their native tongue. Which it was.

I was somewhere in the delta.

Faintly, faintly, behind the raucous birds I could sense the amusement of crows.

I had no sense of direction.

There was no Smoke to take me home.

I was not just dreaming. I had control but did not know what to do with it... Up. Up was always good with Smoke. The higher you went the more the earth looked like an incredibly detailed map. Then you needed only find a landmark you knew. I went up.

I was in the nastiest, most untamed part of the delta. The whole world was black water, bugs and densely packed trees. That was very nearly my idea of hell.

I had to go way up above where the buzzards soar to see anything else. In the meantime psychic chills twisted the imaginary me; fear gnawed hard and deep. Rising with me was a momentary certainty that I would never find any landmark.

The sun was a landmark. If you had eyes to see it.

I could not see much very well. Not even the birds that shied away.

So I could not find a landmark the logical way. Well, there was a different green over that way.

The different green proved to be empty rice paddies. I zigged this way, zagged that, found a village, found the path that ran out of the village and followed it. I moved at wild speeds. Still, I knew, it was going to take me a long time to get back to where I started.

Damned Soulcatcher!

I heard the voices mocking crows.

I saw a village that looked familiar.

Some would say all Nyueng Bao hamlets look alike. They do, pretty much, from what I have seen. But their temples vary radically according to the wealth and status and age of the town. I had seen this temple before, weeks ago when I was searching for Goblin. I had, in fact, glimpsed a girl who looked so much like Sahra that I wanted to cry when I left Smoke's world.

I paused there, drifted around, watched the villagers about their early morning business. Everything seemed typical of a Nyueng Bao hamlet, from all I had heard. Even though it was the middle of winter there was work to do. People were getting set to do it.

It was a very prosperous town. Very old, too, probably. The temple was large and looked like it had been there for ages. A pair of mighty two-headed elephants formed pillars to either side of a door as tall as three Nyueng Bao men. The two-headed elephant represented the god of luck among the Gunni. I recall One-Eye saying luck took that form because it was powerful and two-faced.

Oh. That must be the girl I had seen before. The ringer for Sarie. She came out of the temple looking exhausted, sad. Could this be the same woman? The earlier one had looked like a slightly younger version of Sarie. This one looked like an older one, after having gained ten pounds and several years. She had that incredible face but both her hips and breasts were slightly heavier than Sahra's had been and she was ill-kempt, something Sarie never was, even in the worst of times. This woman was dirty, ragged, in despair.

But she did look so much like Sarie that I wanted to go to her and take her pain away, whatever it might be.

I drifted closer, almost enjoying my own self-pitying pain, wondering why the woman wore white when almost all Nyueng Bao except priests dressed in black. Except on special occasions.

I could ask Thai Dei when I got back. If I ever found the way.

I was so near the woman I could have taken her into my arms and kissed her had I been in flesh. I wanted to, she resembled Sarie so much in her face.

Had Sarie had cousins? I know she had uncles because at least one died during the siege of Dejagore. She might have had aunts who stayed behind, too. The party of pilgrims had included only a fraction of the delta population.

The woman in white looked square where my eyes would have been. Her eyes widened. Her skin went pale. She let out a shriek, then collapsed. Several old men in colored robes rushed out of the temple. They began trying to bring the woman around, gabbling at one another too fast for me to follow. She regained her composure as they helped her to her feet. "I thought I saw a ghost," she said in response to insistent questions. "It must be the fasting."

Fasting? It did not look like she had been missing many meals to me.

So she had sensed my presence, eh? Worth remembering. But I had a battle to get back to. I was no use to anyone down here, all but lost. I found the road out of town, followed it in a direction I believed would eventually bring me to Taglios. From Taglios it would be an easy course to chart south.