The White Rose

Twenty-Two The Plain of Fear

The men who fled Rust with the cowardly windwhale eventually arrived. We learned that the Taken had escaped the Plain, all in a rage because but one carpet survived. Their offensive would be delayed till the carpets were replaced. And carpets are among the greatest and most costly magicks. I suspect the Limper had to do a lot of explaining to the Lady.

I drafted One-Eye, Goblin, and Silent into an expanded project. I translated. They extracted proper names, assembled them in charts. My quarters became all but impenetrable. And barely livable while they were there, for Goblin and One-Eye had had a couple of tastes of life outside Darling’s null. They were at one another constantly.

And I began having nightmares.

One evening I posed a challenge, half as a result of no further courier arriving, half as busy work meant to stop Goblin and One-Eye from driving me mad. I said, “I may have to leave the Plain. Can you do something so I don’t attract any special attention?”

They had their questions. I answered most honestly. They wanted to go too, as if a journey west was established fact. I said, “No way are you going. A thousand miles of this crap? I’d commit suicide before we got off the Plain. Or murder one of you. Which I’m considering anyway.”

Goblin squeaked. He pretended mortal terror. One-Eye said, “Get within ten feet of me and I’ll turn you into a lizard.”

I made a rude noise. “You can barely turn food into shit.”

Goblin cackled. “Chickens and cows do better. You can fertilize with theirs.”

“You got no room to talk, runt,” I snapped.

“Getting touchy in his old age,” One-Eye observed. “Must be rheumatiz. Got the rheumatiz, Croaker?”

“He’ll wish his problem was rheumatism if he keeps on,” Goblin promised. “It’s bad enough I have to put up with you. But you’re at least predictable.”

“Predictable?”

“Like the seasons.”

They were off. I sped Silent a look of appeal. The son-of-a-bitch ignored me.

Next day Goblin ambled in wearing a smug smile. “We figured something out, Croaker. In case you do go wandering.”

“Like what?”

“We’ll need your amulets.”

I had two that they had given me long ago. One was supposed to warn me of the proximity of the Taken. It worked quite well. The other, ostensibly, was protective, but it also let them locate me from a distance. Silent tracked it the time Catcher sent Raven and me to ambush Limper and Whisper in the Forest of Cloud, when Limper tried to go over to the Rebel.

Long ago and far away. Memories of a younger Croaker.

“We’ll work up some modifications. So you can’t be located magically. Let me have them. Later we’ll have to go outside to test them.”

I eyed him narrowly.

He said, “You’ll have to come so we can test them by trying to find you.”

“Yeah? Sounds like a drummed-up excuse to get outside the null.”

“Maybe.” He grinned.

Whatever, Darling liked the notion. Next evening we headed up the creek, skirting Old Father Tree. “He looks a little peaked,” I said.

“Caught the side wash of a Taken spell during the brouhaha,” One-Eye explained. “I don’t think he was pleased.”

The old tree tinkled. I stopped, considered it. It had to be thousands of years old. Trees grow very slow on the Plain. What stories it would tell!

“Come on, Croaker,” Goblin called. “Old Father ain’t talking.” He grinned his frog grin.

They know me too well. Know when I see anything old I wonder what it has seen. Damn them, anyhow.

We left the watercourse five miles from the Hole, quartered westward into desert where the coral was especially dense and dangerous. I guess there were five hundred species, in reefs so close they were almost impenetrable. The colors were riotous. Fingers, fronds, branches of coral soared thirty feet into the air. I remain eternally amazed that the wind does not topple them.

In a small sandy place surrounded by coral, One-Eye called a halt. “This is far enough. We’ll be safe here.”

I wondered. Our progress had been followed by manias and the creatures that resemble buzzards. Never will I trust such beasts completely.

Long, long ago, after the Battle at Charm, the Company crossed the Plain en route to assignments in the east. I saw horrible things happen. I could not shake the memories.

Goblin and One-Eye played games but also tended to business. They remind me of active children. Always into something, just to be doing. I lay back and watched the clouds. Soon I fell asleep.

Goblin wakened me. He returned my amulets. “We’re going to play hide-and-seek,” he said. “We’ll give you a head start. If we’ve done everything right, we won’t be able to find you.”

“Now that’s wonderful,” I replied. “Me alone out here, wandering around lost.” I was just carping. I could find the Hole. As a nasty practical joke I was tempted to head straight there.

This was business, though.

I set off to the southwest, toward the buttes. I crossed the westward trail and went into hiding among quiescent walking trees. Only after darkness fell did I give up waiting. I walked back to the Hole, wondering what had become of my companions. I startled the sentry when I arrived. “Goblin and One-Eye come in?”

“No. I thought they were with you.”

“They were.” Concerned, I went below, asked the Lieutenant’s advice.

“Go find them,” he told me.

“How?”

He looked at me like I was a half-wit. “Leave your silly amulets, go outside the null, and wait.”

“Oh. Okay.”

So I went back outside, walked up the creek, grumbling. My feet ached. I was not used to so much hiking. Good for me, I told myself. Had to be in shape if there was a trip to Oar in the cards.

I reached the edge of the coral reefs. “One-Eye! Goblin! You guys around?”

No answer. I was not going on looking, though. The coral would kill me. I circled north, assuming they had moved away from the Hole. Each few minutes I dropped to my knees, hoping to spot a menhir’s silhouette. The menhirs would know what had become of them.

Once I saw some flash and fury from the corner of my eye and, without thinking, ran that way, thinking it was Goblin and One-Eye squabbling. But a direct look revealed the distant rage of a change storm.

I stopped immediately, belatedly remembering that only death hurries on the Plain by night.

I was lucky. Just steps onward the sand became spongy, loose. I squatted, sniffed a handful. It held the smell of old death. I backed away carefully. Who knows what lay in waiting beneath that sand?

“Better plant somewhere and wait for the sun,” I muttered. I was no longer certain of my position.

I found some rocks that would break the wind, some brush for firewood, and pitched camp. The fire was more to declare myself to beasts than to keep warm. The night was not cold.

Firemaking was a symbolic statement out there.

Once the flames rose I found that the place had been used before. Smoke had blackened the rocks. Native humans, probably. They wander in small bands. We have little intercourse with them. They have no interest in the world struggle.

Will failed me sometime after the second hour. I fell asleep.

The nightmare found me. And found me unshielded by amulets or null.

She came.

It had been years. Last time it was to report the final defeat of her husband in the affair at Juniper.

A golden cloud, like dust motes dancing in a sunbeam. An all-over feeling of being awake while sleeping. Calmness and fear together. An inability to move. All the old symptoms.

A beautiful woman formed in the cloud, a woman out of daydream. The sort you hope to meet someday, knowing there is no chance. I cannot say what she wore, if she wore anything. My universe consisted of her face and the terror its presence inspired.

Her smile was not at all cold. Long ago, for some reason, she took an interest in me. I supposed she retained some residue of the old affection, as one does for a pet long dead.

“Physician.” Breeze in the reeds beside the waters of eternity. The whisper of angels. But never could she make me forget the reality whence the voice sprang.

Nor was she ever so gauche as to tempt me, either with promises or herself. That, perhaps, is one reason I think she felt a certain fondness. When she used me, she gave it to me straight going in.

I could not respond.

“You are safe. Long ago, by your standard of time, I said I would remain in touch. I have been unable. You cut me off. I have been trying for weeks.”

The nightmares explained.

“What?” I squeaked like Goblin.

“Join me at Charm. Be my historian.”

As always when she touched me, I was baffled. She seemed to consider me outside the struggle while yet a part of it. On the Stair of Tear, on the eve of the most savage sorcerous struggle ever I witnessed, she came to promise me I would come to no harm. She seemed intrigued with my lesser role as Company historian. Back when, she insisted I record events as they happened. Without regard to pleasing anyone. I had done so within the limits of my prejudices.

“The heat in the crucible is rising, physician. Your White Rose is crafty. Her attack behind the Limper was a grand stroke. But insignificant on the broader canvas. Don’t you agree?”

How could I argue? I did agree.

“As your spies have no doubt reported, five armies stand poised to cleanse the Plain of Fear. It is a strange and unpredictable land. But it will not withstand what is being marshaled.”

Again I could not argue, for I believed her. I could but do what Darling so often spoke of: Buy time. “You may be surprised.”

“Perhaps. Surprises have been calculated into my plans. Come out of that cold waste, Croaker. Come to the Tower. Become my historian.”

This was as near temptation as ever she had come. She spoke to a part of me I do not understand, a part almost willing to betray comrades of decades. If I went, there was so much I would know. So many answers illuminated. So many curiosities satisfied.

“You escaped us at Queen’s Bridge.”

Heat climbed my neck. During our years on the run the Lady’s forces had overtaken us several times. Queen’s Bridge was the worst. A hundred brothers had fallen there. And to my shame, I left the Annals behind, buried in the river bank. Four hundred years worth of Company history, abandoned.

There was just so much that could be carried away. The papers down in the Hole were critical to our future. I took them instead of the Annals. But I suffer frequent bouts of guilt. I must answer the shades of brethren who have gone before. Those Annals are the Black Company. While they exist, the Company lives.

“We escaped and escaped, and will continue to escape. It is fated.”

She smiled, amused. “I have read your Annals, Croaker. New and old.”

I began throwing wood onto the embers of my fire. I was not dreaming. “You have them?” Till that moment I had silenced guilt with promises to recover them.

“They were found after the battle. They came to me. I was pleased. You are honest, as historians go.”

“Thank you. I try.”

“Come to Charm. There is a place for you in the Tower. You can see the grand canvas from here.”

“I can’t.”

“I cannot shield you there. If you stay, you must face what befalls your Rebel friends. The Limper commands that campaign. I will not interfere. He is not what he was. You hurt him. And he had to be hurt more to be saved. He has not forgiven you that, Croaker.”

“I know.” How many times had she used my name? In all our contacts previously, over years, she had used it but once.

“Don’t let him take you.”

A slight, twisted bit of humor rose from somewhere inside me. “You are a failure. Lady.”

She was taken aback.

“Fool that I am, I recorded my romances in the Annals. You read them. You know I never characterized you as black. Not. I think, as I would characterize your husband. I suspect an unconsciously sensed truth lies beneath the silliness of those romances.”

“Indeed?”

“I don’t think you are black. I think you’re just trying. I think that, for all the wickedness you’ve done, part of the child that was remains untainted. A spark remains, and you can’t extinguish it.”

Unchallenged, I became more daring. “I think you’ve selected me as a symbolic sop to that spark. I am a reclamation project meant to satisfy a hidden streak of decency, the way my friend Raven reclaimed a child who became the White Rose. You read the Annals. You know to what depths Raven sank once he concentrated all decency in one cup. Better, perhaps, that he had had none at all. Juniper might still exist. So might he.”

“Juniper was a boil overdue for lancing. I am not come to be mocked, physician. I will not be made to look weak even before an audience of one.”

I started to protest.

“For I know that this, too, will end up in your Annals.”

She knew me. But then, she had had me before the Eye.

“Come to the Tower, Croaker. I demand no oath.”

“Lady...”

“Even the Taken bind themselves with deadly oaths. You may remain free. Just do what you do. Heal, and record the truth. What you would do anywhere. You have value not to be wasted out there.”

Now there was a sentiment with which I could agree wholeheartedly. I would take it back and rub some people’s noses in it. “Say what?”

She started to speak. I raised a warning hand. I had spoken to myself, not to her. Was that a footfall? Yes. Something big coming. Something moving slowly, wearily.

She sensed it, too. An eye blink and she was gone, her departure sucking something from my mind, so that once more I was not certain I had not dreamed everything, for all that every word remained immutably inscribed on the stone of my mind.

I shuffled brush onto my fire, backed into a crack behind the dagger that was the only weapon I’d had sense enough to bring.

It came closer. Then paused. Then came on. My heartbeat increased. Something thrust into the firelight.

“Toadkiller Dog! What the hell, hey? What’re you doing? Come on in out of the cold, boy.” The words tumbled out, bearing fear away. “Boy, will Tracker be glad to see you. What happened to you?”

He came forward cautiously, looking twice as mangy as ever. He dropped onto his belly, rested his chin on forepaws, closed one eye.

“I don’t have any food. I’m sort of lost myself. You’re damned lucky, know that? Making it this far. The plain is a bad place to be on your own.”

Right then that old mongrel looked like he agreed. Body language, if you will. He had survived, but it had not been easy.

I told him, “Sun comes up, we’ll head back. Goblin and One-Eye got lost; it’s their own tough luck.”

After Toadkiller Dog’s arrival I rested better. I guess the old alliance is imprinted on people, too. I was confident he would warn me if trouble beckoned.

Come morning we found the creek and headed for the Hole. I stopped, as I often do, to approach Old Father Tree for a little one-sided conversation about what he had seen during his long sentinelship. The dog would not come anywhere near. Weird. But so what? Weird is the order of the day on the Plain.

I found One-Eye and Goblin snoring, sleeping in. They had returned to the Hole only minutes after my departure in search of them. Bastards. I would redress the balance when the chance came.

I drove them crazy by not mentioning my night out.

“Did it work?” I demanded. Down the tunnel Tracker was having a noisy reunion with his mutt.

“Sort of,” Goblin said. He was not enthusiastic.

“Sort of? What’s sort of! Does it work or doesn’t it?”

“Well, what we got is a problem. Mainly, we can keep the Taken from locating you. From getting a fix on you, so to speak.”

Obfuscation is a sure sign of trouble with this guy. “But? Butt me the but, Goblin.”

“If you go outside the null, there’s no hiding the fact that you are out.”

“Great. Real great. What good are you guys, anyway?”

“It’s not that bad,” One-Eye said. “You wouldn’t attract any attention unless they find out you’re out from some other source. I mean, they wouldn’t be watching for you, would they? No reason to. So it’s just as good as if we got it to do everything we wanted.”

“Crap! You better start praying that next letter comes through. Because if I go out and get my ass killed, guess who’s going to haunt whom forever?”

“Darling wouldn’t send you out.”

“Bet? She’ll go through three or four days of soul-searching. But she’ll send me. Because that last letter will give us the key.”

Sudden fear. Had the Lady probed my mind?

“What’s the matter, Croaker?”

I was saved a lie by Tracker’s advent. He bounced in and pumped my hand like a mad fool. “Thank you, Croaker. Thanks for bringing him home.” Out he went.

“What the hell was that?” Goblin asked.

“I brought his dog home.”

“Weird.”

One-Eye chortled. “The pot calling the kettle black.”

“Yeah? Lizard snot. Want me to tell you about weird?”

“Stow it,” I said. “If I get sent out of here I want this stuff in perfect order. I just wish we had people who could read this junk.”

“Maybe I can help.” Tracker was back. The big dumb lout. A devil with a sword, but probably unable to write his own name.

“How?”

“I could read some of that stuff. I know some old language. My father taught me.” He grinned as if at a huge joke. He selected a piece written in TelleKurre. He read it aloud. The ancient language rolled off his tongue naturally, as I had heard it spoken among the old Taken. Then he translated. It was a memo to a castle kitchen about a meal to be prepared for visiting notables. I went over it painstakingly. His translation was faultless. Better than I could do. A third of the words evaded me.

“Well. Welcome to the team. I’ll tell Darling.” I slipped out, exchanging a puzzled glance with One-Eye behind Tracker’s back.

Stranger and stranger. What was this man? Besides weird. At first encounter he reminded me of Raven, and fit the role. When I came to think of him as big, slow, and clumsy, he fit that role. Was he a reflection of the image in his beholder?

A good fighter, though, bless him. Worth ten of anyone else we have.