The White Rose

Chapter Seven: THE SECOND LETTER

Croaker:

Bomanz peered through his transit, sighting on the prow of the Great Barrow. He stepped back, noted the angle, opened one of his crude field maps. This was where he had unearthed the TelleKurre axe. "Wish Occules' descriptions weren't so vague. This must have been the flank of their formation. The axis of their line should have paralleled the others, so. Shifter and the knights would have bunched up over there. I'll be damned."

The ground there humped slightly. Good. Less ground water to damage buried artifacts. But the overgrowth was dense. Scrub oak. Wild roses. Poison ivy. Especially poison ivy. Bomanz hated that pestilential weed. He started scratching just thinking about it.

"Bomanz."

"What?" He whirled, raising his rake.

"Whoa! Take it easy, Bo."

"What's the matter with you? Sneaking up like that. Ain't funny, Besand. Want me to rake that idiot grin off your face?"

"Ooh! Nasty today, aren't we?" Besand was a lean old man approximately Bomanz's age. His shoulders slumped, following his head, which thrust forward as though he was sniffing a trail. Great blue veins humped the backs of his hands. Liver spots dotted his skin.

"What the hell do you expect? Come jumping out of the bushes at a man."

"Bushes? What bushes? Your conscience bothering you, Bo?"

"Besand, you've been trying to trap me since the moon was green. Why don't you give up? First Jasmine gives me a hard way to go, then Tokar buys me out so I have to go digging fresh stock, and now I have to dance with you? Go away. I'm not in the mood."

Besand grinned a big, lopsided grin, revealing pickets of rotten teeth. "I haven't caught you, Bo, but that don't mean you're innocent. It just means I never caught you."

"If I'm not innocent, you must be damned stupid not to catch me in forty years. Damn, man, why the hell can't you make life easy for both of us?"

Besand laughed. "Real soon now I'll be out of your hair for good. They're putting me out to pasture."

Bomanz leaned on his rake, considered the Guardsman. Besand exuded a sour odor of pain. "Really? I'm sorry."

"Bet you are. My replacement might be smart enough to catch you."

"Give it a rest. You want to know what I'm doing? Figuring where the TelleKurre knights went down. Tokar wants spectacular stuff. That's the best I can do. Short of going over there and giving you an excuse to hang me. Hand me that dowser."

Besand passed the divining rod. "Mound robbing, eh? Tokar suggest that?"

Icy needles burrowed into Bomanz's spine. This was more than a casual question. "We have to do this constantly? Haven't we known each other long enough to do without the cat-and-mouse?"

"I enjoy it, Bo." Besand trailed him to the overgrown hummock. "Going to have to clear this out. Just can't keep up anymore. No; enough men, not enough money."

"Could you get it right away? That's where I want to dig, I think. Poison ivy."

"Oh, 'ware poison ivy, Bo." Besand snickered. Each summer Bomanz cursed his way through numerous botanical afflictions. "About Tokar…"

"I don't deal with people who want to break the law. That's been my rule forever. Nobody bothers me anymore."

"Oblique but acceptable."

Bomanz's wand twitched. "I'll be dipped in sheep shit. Right in the middle."

"Sure?"

"Look at it jump. Must've buried them in one big hole."

"About Tokar…"

"What about him, dammit? You want to hang him, go ahead. Just give me time to hook up with somebody else who can handle my business as good."

"I don't want to hang anybody, Bo. I just want to warn you. There's a rumor out of Oar that says he's a Resurrectionist. "

Bomanz dropped his rod. He gobbled air. "Really? A Resurrectionist?"

The Monitor scrutinized him intently. "Just a rumor. I hear all kinds. Thought you might want to know. We're as close as two men get around here."

Bomanz accepted the olive branch. "Yeah. Honestly, he's never dropped a hint. Whew! That's a load to drop on a man." A load which deserved some heavy thinking. "Don't tell anybody what I found. That thief Men fu…"

Besand laughed yet again. His mirth had a sephulchral quality.

"You enjoy your work, don't you? I mean, harassing people who don't dare fight back."

"Careful, Bo. I could drag you in for questioning." Besand spun, stalked away.

Bomanz sneered at his back. Of course Besand enjoyed his job. It let him play dictator. He could do anything to anyone without having to answer for it.

Once the Dominator and his minions fell and were buried in their mounds behind barriers wrought of the finest magicks of their day, the White Rose decreed that an eternal guard be posted. A guard beholden to none, charged with preventing the resurrection of the undead evil beneath the mounds. The White Rose understood human nature. Always there would be those who would see profit in using or following the Dominator. Always there would be worshippers of evil who wished their champion freed.

The Resurrectionists appeared almost before the grass sprouted on the barrows.

Tokar a Resurrectionist? Bomanz thought. Don't I have enough trouble? Besand will pitch his tent in my pocket now.

Bomanz had no interest in reviving the old evils. He merely wanted to make contact with one of them so as to illuminate several ancient mysteries.

Besand was out of sight. He should stomp all the way back to his quarters. There would be time for a few forbidden observations. Bomanz realigned his transit.

The Barrowland did not have the look of great evil, only of neglect. Four hundred years of vegetation and weather had restructured that once marvelous work. The barrows and mystical landscaping were all but lost amidst the brush covering them. The Eternal Guard no longer had the wherewithal to perform adequate upkeep. Monitor Besand was fighting a desperate rearguard action against time itself.

Nothing grew well on the Barrowland. The vegetation was twisted and stunted. Still, the shapes of the mounds, and the menhirs and fetishes which bound the Taken, were often concealed.

Bomanz had spent a lifetime sorting out which mound was which, who lay where, and where each menhir and fetish stood. His master chart, his silken treasure, was nearly complete. He could, almost, thread the maze. He was so close he was tempted to try before he was truly ready. But he was no fool. He meant to try nursing sweet milk from the blackest of cows. He dared make no mistake. He had Besand on the one hand, the poisonous old wickedness on the other. But if he succeeded… Ah, if he succeeded. If he made contact and nursed away the secrets… Man's knowledge would be extended dramatically. He would become the mightiest of living mages. His fame would course with the wind. Jasmine would have everything she quarreled about sacrificing. If he made contact.

He would, by damn! Neither fear nor the infirmity of age would stay him now. A few months and he would have the last key.

Bomanz had lived his lies so long he often lied to himself. Even in his honest moments he never confessed his most powerful motive, his intellectual affair with the Lady. It was she who had intrigued him from the beginning, she whom he was trying to contact, she who made the literature endlessly fascinating. Of all the lords of the Domination she was the most shadowed, the most surrounded by myth, the least encumbered by historical fact. Some scholars called her the greatest beauty ever to have lived, claiming that simply to have seen her was to have fallen into her thrall. Some called her the true motive force of the Domination. A few admitted that their documentaries were really little more than romantic fantasies. Others admitted nothing while demonstrably embellishing. Bomanz had become perpetually bemused while still a student.

Back in his attic, he spread his silken chart. His day had not been a complete waste. He had located a previously unknown menhir and had identified the spells it anchored. And he had found the TelleKurre site. That would buy the mutton and beans.

He glared at the chart, as if pure will might conjure the information he needed.

There were two diagrams. The upper was a five-pointed star within a slightly larger circle. Such had been the shape of the Barrowland when newly constructed. The star had stood a fathom above the surrounding terrain, retained by limestone walls. The circle represented the outer bank of a moat, the earth from which had been used to build the barrows, the star, and a pentagon within the star. Today the moat was little more than boggy ground. Besand's predecessors had been unable to keep up with Nature.

Within the star, drawn off the points where the arms met, was a pentagon another fathom high. It, too, had been retained, but the walls had fallen and become overgrown. Central to the pentagon, on a north-south axis, lay the Great Barrow where the Dominator slept.

At the points of his chart star, clockwise from the top, Bomanz had penned the odd numbers from one to nine. Accompanying each was a name: Soulcatcher, Shapeshifter. Nightcrawler, Stormbringer, Bonegnasher. The occupants of the five outer barrows had been identified. The five inner points were numbered evenly, beginning at the right foot of the arm of the star pointing northward. At four was the Howler, at eight the Limper. The graves of three of the Ten Who Were Taken remained unidentified.

"Who's in that damned six spot?" Bomanz muttered. He slammed a fist against the table. "Dammit!" Four years and he was no closer to that name. The mask concealing that identity was the one remaining substantial barrier. Everything else was plain technical application, a matter of negating wardspells, then of contacting the great one in the central mound.

The wizards of the White Rose had left volumes bragging about their performances of their art, but not one word of where their victims lay. Such was human nature. Besand bragged about the fish he caught, the bait he used, and seldom produced the veritable piscine trophy.

Below his star chart Bomanz had drawn a second portraying the central mound. It was a rectangle on a north-south axis surrounded by and filled with ranks of symbols. Outside each corner was a representation of a menhir which, on the Barrowland, was a twelve-foot pillar topped by a two-faced owl's head. One face glared inward, the other out. The menhirs formed the corner posts anchoring the first line of spells warding the Great Barrow.

Along the sides were the line posts, little circles representing wooden fetish poles. Most had rotted and fallen, their spells drooping with them. The Eternal Guard had no staff wizard capable of restoring or replacing them.

Within the mound proper there were symbols ranked in three rectangles of declining size. The outermost resembled pawns, the next knights, and the inner, elephants. The crypt of the Dominator was surrounded by men who had given their lives to bring him down. Ghosts were the middle line between old evil and a world capable of recalling it. Bomanz anticipated no difficulty getting past them. The ghosts were there, in his opinion, to discourage common grave robbers.

Within the three rectangles Bomanz had drawn a dragon with its tail in its mouth. Legend said a great dragon lay curled round the crypt, more alive than the Lady or Dominator, catnapping the centuries away while awaiting an attempt to recall the trapped evil.

Bomanz had no way of coping with the dragon, but he had no need, either. He meant to communicate with the crypt, not to open it.

Damn! If he could only lay hands on an old Guardsman's amulet… The early Guards had worn amulets which had allowed them to go into the Barrowland to keep it up. The amulets still existed, though they were no longer used. Besand wore one. The others he kept squirreled away.

Besand. That madman. That sadist.

Bomanz considered the Monitor his closest acquaintance- but a friend, never. No, never a friend. Sad commentary on his life, that the man nearest him would be one who would jump at a chance to torture or hang him.

What was that about retirement? Someone outside this forsaken forest had recalled the Barrowland?

"Bomanz! Are you going to eat?"

Bomanz muttered imprecations and rolled his chart.

The Dream came that night. Something sirenic called him. He was young again, single, strolling the lane that passed his house. A woman waved. Who was she? He didn't know. He didn't care. He loved her. Laughing, he ran toward her… Floating steps. Effort took him no nearer. Her face saddened. She faded… "Don't go!" he called. "Please!" But she disappeared, and took with her his sun.

A vast starless night devoured his dream. He floated in a clearing within a forest unseen. Slowly, slowly, a diffuse silver something limned the trees. A big star with a long silver mane. He watched it grow till its tail spanned the sky.

Twinge of uncertainty. Shadow of fear. "It's coming right at me!" He cringed, threw his arm across his face. The silver ball filled the sky. It had a face. The woman's face…

"Bo! Stop it!" Jasmine punched him again.

He sat up. "Uhn? What?"

"You were yelling. That nightmare again?"

He listened to his heart hammer, sighed. Could it take much more? He was an old man. "The same one." It recurred at unpredictable intervals. "It was stronger this time."

"Maybe you ought to see a dream doctor."

"Out here?" He snorted disgustedly. "I don't need a dream doctor anyway."

"No. Probably just your conscience. Nagging you for luring Stancil back from Oar."

"I didn't lure… Go to sleep." To his amazement, she rolled over, for once unwilling to pursue their squabble.

He stared into the darkness. It had been so much clearer. Almost too crisp and obvious. Was there a meaning hidden behind the dream's warning against tampering?

Slowly, slowly, the mood of the beginning of the dream returned. That sense of being summoned, of being but one intuitive step from heart's desire. It felt good. His tension drained away. He fell asleep smiling.

Besand and Bomanz stood watching Guardsmen clear the brush from Bomanz's site. Bomanz suddenly spat, "Don't bum it, you idiot! Stop him, Besand."

Besand shook his head. A Guard with a torch backed away from the brush pile. "Son, you don't burn poison ivy. The smoke spreads the poison."

Bomanz was scratching. And wondering why his companion was being so reasonable. Besand smirked. "Get itchy just thinking about it, don't you?"

"Yes."

"There's your other itch." He pointed. Bomanz saw his competitor Men fu observing from a safe distance. He growled, "I never hated anybody, but he tempts me. He has no ethics, no scruples, and no conscience. He's a thief and a liar."

"I know him, Bo. And lucky for you I do."

"Let me ask you something, Besand. Monitor Besand. How come you don't aggravate him the way you do me? What do you mean, lucky?"

"He accused you of Resurrectionist tendencies. I don't shadow him because his many virtues include cowardice. He doesn't have the hair to recover proscribed artifacts."

"And I do? That little wart libeled me? With capital crimes? If I weren't an old man…"

"He'll get his, Bo. And you do have the guts. I've just never caught you with the inclination."

Bomanz rolled his eyes. "Here we go. The veiled accusations…"

"Not so veiled, my friend. There's a moral laxness in you, an unwillingness to accept the existence of evil, that stinks like an old corpse. Give it its head and I'll catch you, Bo. The wicked are cunning, but they always betray themselves."

For an instant Bomanz thought his world was falling apart. Then he realized Besand was fishing. A dedicated fisherman, the Monitor. Shaken, he countered, "I'm sick of your sadism. If you really suspected anything, you'd be on me like a snake on shit. Legalities never meant anything to you Guards. You're probably lying about Men fu. You'd haul your own mother in on the word of a sorrier villain than him. You're sick, Besand. You know that? Diseased. Right here." He tapped his temple. "You can't relate without cruelty."

"You're pushing your luck again. Bo."

Bomanz backed down. Fright and temper had been talking. In his own odd way Besand had shown him special tolerance.

It was as though he were necessary to the Monitor's emotional health. Besand needed one person, outside the Guard, whom he did not victimize. Someone whose immunity repaid him in a sort of validation… I'm symbolic of the people he defends? Bomanz snorted. That was rich.

That business about being retired. Did he say more than I heard? Is he calling off all bets because he's leaving? Maybe he does have a sense for scofflaws. Maybe he wants to go out with a flash.

What about the new man? Another monster, unblinkered by the gossamer I've spun across Besand's eyes? Maybe someone who will come in like the bull into the corrida? And Tokar, the possible Resurrectionist… How does he fit?

"What's the matter?" Besand asked. Concern colored his words.

"Ulcer's bothering me." Bomanz massaged his temples, hoping the headache would not come too.

"Plant your markers. Men fu might jump you right here."

"Yeah." Bomanz took a half dozen stakes from his pack. Each trailed a strip of yellow cloth. He planted them. Custom dictated that the ground so circumscribed was his to exploit.

Men fu could make night raids, or whatever, and Bomanz would have no legal recourse. Claims had no standing in law, only in private treaty. The antique miners exercised their own sanctions.

Men fu was under every sanction but violence. Nothing altered his thieving ways.

"Wish Stancil was here," Bomanz said. "He could watch at night."

"I'll growl at him. That's always good for a few days. I heard Stance was coming home."

"Yeah. For the summer. We're excited. We haven't seen him in four years."

"Friend of Tokar, isn't he?"

Bomanz whirled. "Damn you! You never let up, do you?" He spoke softly, in genuine rage, without the shouts and curses and dramatic gestures of his habitual semi-rage.

"All right, Bo. I'll drop it."

"You'd better. You'd damned well better. I won't have you crawling all over him all summer. Won't have it, you hear?"

"I said I'd drop it."