Soldiers Live

28

The Taglian Territories: The Blind Measures of Despair

Narayan groaned when the girl wakened him. He regained control quickly, however. The Protector was out there somewhere, never closer than she had been these past two days. The Daughter of Night's valiant efforts, using talents she did not understand, had been just enough to prevent their capture. But it was a close thing every day. And the game might not last much longer. He and the girl had nothing left. If the Protector brought in some of the shadows she controlled...

"What is it?" he breathed. He fought the pain that was with him always nowadays.

"Something's happened. Something big. I can feel it. It's... I don't know. It's like my mother woke up, took a look around, then went back to sleep."

Narayan did not understand. He said so.

"It was her. I know. She touched me." From confusion the girl moved swiftly toward assurance and confidence. "She wanted me to know that she's still there. She wanted me to hang on. She wanted me to know things will be getting better soon."

Narayan, who had known the girl's birth mother well, suspected the child took after her aunt, the Protector, far more. The Protector was changeable. The Daughter of Night's moods could shift with a change in the breeze. He wished she were more stable, like her mother. Although Lady could become obsessively focused. For example, she was determined to even scores with him and the Deceiver cult. She had been Kina's tool but had no love or respect whatsoever for the Goddess.

"Did you hear me, Narayan? She's there! She's not going to lay low much longer."

"I heard. And I really am as excited as you are. But there are wonders and wonders. We still have to get away from the Protector." He indicated the sky to their west. Crows swarmed not half a mile down the long, scrubby slope.

Soulcatcher had her obsessions, too. This chase had gone on forever, successfully for neither party thereto. Did the Protector have no other work to do? Who was managing Taglios and its territories? Deviltry was sure to flourish in her absence.

From the beginning of the chase Narayan had been confident that Soulcatcher would get bored and would turn to something else. She always did.

But not this time. This time she was dogged.

Why?

No telling with the Protector. She might have had a vision of the future. She might be unable to think of a more amusing hobby. She was twisted inside. Her motives might not always make sense even to her.

The crows began to fan out to the north of what must be Soulcatcher's position. They seemed to be interested in a slice of pie arc. They drifted on the breeze, not working hard, slowly moving away. Narayan and the Daughter of Night watched without moving. Crows were sharp of eye. If the two most holy Deceivers could see them, the crows could see the Deceivers in turn—if the girl's erratic talent failed for even a moment.

A single bird glided to the southeast, rather drunkenly, Narayan thought. Soon no black bird could be seen in any direction.

Narayan said, "Let's move on now. While we can. You know, I think that haze down south might be the Dandha Presh. We'll be in the mountains in another week. She won't have a hope of catching us there."

He was whistling in the dark. And they both knew it.

The Daughter of Night led the way. She was far more mobile than Narayan. Frequently she grew impatient with Narayan's inability to keep up. Sometimes she cursed him and hit him. He suspected that she would desert him if she had any other resource. But her horizons never did extend far beyond the boundaries of their cult and she understood that the living saint had far more influence with the Deceivers than did any ill-schooled female messiah whose status as such was accepted only because it bore the living saint's chop of authenticity.

Narayan's lagging actually saved them. The girl was squatting in brush, looking back with ill-concealed irritation. "There's a clearing. It's big. Not much cover. Shall we wait until dark? Or should we work our way around?" It was much too difficult for her to keep them invisible when they were in the open.

Narayan sometimes wondered what she might have become had she grown up with her birth mother. Lady would have turned her into a dark terror by now, he was certain. Not for the first or even the hundredth time he wished Kina had allowed him to sacrifice Lady the day he had claimed the newly born Daughter of Night. His life since would have been much easier had the woman died then. "Let me look."

Narayan crouched. Pain clawed his bad leg as though someone was slashing him with a dull knife. He peered out at a stony waste almost devoid of life—except for a stunted, twisted stump of a tree smack in the middle. It stood just over five feet tall. There was a familiar feeling to it. He had not seen it before but knew he should recognize it. "Don't move," he told the Daughter of Night. "Don't even breathe fast. There's something not quite right out there."

He froze. The girl froze. She never questioned him in these things. He was right every time.

It came to him eventually. He whispered. "That's the Protector, that stump. Wrapped inside an illusion. She's used the trick before. I heard about it when I was a prisoner of the Black Company. It was one of the devices she used when she was stalking them and they kept telling each other to look out for it. Look carefully at the root of that branch that twists around twice and ends in a cluster of little twigs. See the crow hiding there?"

"Yes."

"Back away carefully. Slowly. What?... Freeze!"

The girl froze. She remained unmoving for many minutes, until Narayan began to relax. She murmured, "What was it?" Neither the stump nor the crow had done anything alarming.

"There was something... " But he was no longer sure. It had been there in the corner of his eye for an instant but not there when he looked directly. "Over by that big red boulder."

"Hush!" The girl stared in another direction. "I think... There. Something... I can't see anything but I can feel it. I think it's watching the tree... "

Grrr!

Both felt rather than heard the growl from behind them.

Such was their self-discipline, after years on the run, that neither so much as flinched. Something large and dark and not quite there trotted past. The living saint's mouth opened wide but no scream came forth. The girl drifted closer to him without making any sudden movement.

What seemed like a series of large black cutouts of an unfamiliar animal flickered across the open ground. It looked nothing like a dog. It had too many limbs. But in its brief moment beside the stump it lifted a hind leg and loosed a river.

And then, of course, it was not there anymore. But Soulcatcher was, in her own form. And she was in a towering rage.

"Something has changed," Narayan gasped through his pain.

"Something more than Mother."

Something more than the Mother of Night.

Something that, from that moment onward, left them feeling as though they were being watched every moment—even when they could see nothing around them anywhere.