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.
27.
I did not have to make the trip the hard way. Not long after I found the river my whole universe began to rock. After its third unnatural shaking I began to feel pain. Twice more and I went into darkness, passed through, and came up to awareness inside One-Eye's wagon. The little shit was holding me up by the shirt and slapping me while he growled something about waking my ass up.
I was sitting up beside Smoke when I opened my eyes. I was soaked with sweat. I was shaking.
One-Eye demanded, "What the hell is the matter with you?"
"I'm not sure. Soulcatcher, I think. It was sort of like when I used to fall through time to Dejagore. Only I kind of squirted like a sugarmelon seed, right off to somewhere in the delta. I knew what was happening but I couldn't control it. In a way it was like walking with the ghost. But I couldn't see very far..." I realized I was babbling, in Taglian yet. I managed to bite down on it.
"We'll talk about it later. I've got work to do."
I opened my mouth to protest.
"You want to talk, go see Croaker. Or do whatever else you want. But get out of the way. I'm not kidding about the work."
Angry, I clambered out of the wagon. It was daytime out there, just as it had been in the swamp. There was a lot of smoke. There was plenty of noise from the front, where the situation seemed to be static. There was not much chance the Old Man would take time out to hear about my misadventure. It did not affect what was happening right now.
I went over to the campfire. It had gone out. In fact, it had gone cold.
Where were Thai Dei and his mother? Where was Uncle Doj?
Not here.
I found water and drank, wondering how long it would be before the water supply became as critical as the food. I napped. Eventually One-Eye completed his business. He came out and sat beside me. "Now tell me about it."
I told him.
"You might have learned something important this time, Kid."
"Like what?"
"I'll let you know after I talk to Croaker."
28.
I was an afrit buzzing behind Mogaba's shoulder. He and his captains were rattled.
Longshadow exhorted them to stop embarrassing his warrior empire.
"Somebody pour mud in that idiot's mouth," one of Mogaba's few loyal Nar growled. "What a cretin."
I agreed.
A cretin with a hearing impairment, apparently. He did not respond to the most direct provocation I had yet heard from any of those who served him.
Mogaba pretended to hear nothing himself. He watched the cliffs. Vicious, incessant fighting continued there. Our troops worked the attack in shifts. Mogaba's men were unable to do so themselves. He had almost no reserves. There was little hope in his eyes as he sent his commanders back to their units. But he was a soldier's soldier. He would fight until he fell.
Just like he had tried to do at Dejagore.
He had us by the short hairs if his troops went to eating each other in order to outlast us.
Our siege towers crept forward like tall, slow ships. Our elephants and surviving camp followers pulled them using cables passed through blocks attached to the steel spikes the elephants had planted earlier. When the towers finally stopped soldiers brought mantlets up to fill the gaps between. Protected by the mantlets engineers began erecting a wooden wall.
Missiles left the towers in swarms.
Mogaba had no engine powerful enough to penetrate the coverings on the towers. He had to do something.
The Shadowmaster forbid his doing the one thing that would have helped. Longshadow was worse than any spoiled child, stubborn as a rock. Things were going to be done his way and that was that. Mogaba was not going to take one step forward.
Mogaba was very near his limit but not yet ready to defy Longshadow. He was aware that Lady was over on our side just waiting for a chance to make his life miserable. That would happen seconds after the Shadowmaster took his toys and went home.
If he could not attack, Mogaba decided, he would pull back, leaving his forward works manned by minimal forces. They were to withdraw in such a way that we should not notice them moving out of harm's way.
But I was watching.
Mogaba told Howler, "You'd better keep your carpet ready. I'm doing this with both hands tied. I won't last long."
Longshadow turned. If looks could kill.
Howler's stance turned ugly, too. He did not want to be labeled a coward in front of witnesses.
A sudden uproar exploded on the far side of the pass. I darted over to the Deceiver camp. And there was Uncle Doj with Ash Wand, butchering Stranglers wholesale. Nasty old Mother Gota covered his back, moving about as slickly as he did.
Not bad for an old gal who practiced only when she could not duck out of it.
How had they gotten over there?
Then the real shit splashed down.
The Prahbrindrah Drah finally launched the attack the Old Man had dropped into his lap.
A dozen war elephants spearheaded the Prince's assault.
Shadowlander troops rushed to man their forward works. Arrows fell in sheets.
Mogaba showed us. He jelled his defense. He murdered our elephants. His men showed their superior discipline. They sent the Prince staggering back with losses as appalling as those I had anticipated before we saw any of the Captain's trickeries.
Mogaba launched a vicious counterattack he claimed was just a heavy pursuit. The wooden walls between our siege towers held until Longshadow recognized what Mogaba was doing and ordered him to pull back.
Immediately, as though he knew what was happening even without any reports, Croaker launched an attack on his flank. Only minutes later Lady attacked on the left.
Fighting on the heights grew even more savage. I lost track of my feisty in-laws. Narayan Singh and the Daughter of Night fled the Deceiver encampment and went into hiding beneath Mogaba's watchtower.
There were no surprises from our side. Our divisions took turns attacking. Mogaba's men repelled them but had to come out into the missile storm to do it. Workmen edged the towers forward again, inch by inch. Longshadow persisted in his irrational behavior. He began to look not only a lackwit but actively suicidal. He kept poor Mogaba operating with his hands tied and his ankles in chains, yet dumped buckets of blame on him because it looked like he was going to fail.
And the heights were aflame.
That facet of the fighting was almost over.
29.
I told Croaker, "I found out why Longshadow refuses to turn Mogaba loose when even he's got to see that that's best. He's scared Mogaba might do a Blade of his own."
"The Shadowmaster is a blind fool," Blade said. "He doesn't know how to look at people."
I said, "What?"
"Mogaba has to destroy Croaker. He can't do anything else and live with the image of himself he's created for himself."
Croaker made a rude noise.
Blade continued, "Mogaba has his own troubles keeping in touch with reality anymore. This confrontation has become what his life is all about. There's no future if there's no victory."
Croaker was not flattered. "I feel pretty much the same way." He told me, "Longshadow is right about one thing. The whole world is out to get his ass. What's morale like over there?"
I winced. Was I supposed to tell him in front of people who knew nothing about Smoke?
"Lower than a snake's butt," One-Eye said. I glowered at him.
"They likely to break?"
"Only if Mogaba runs. They may not like him a whole lot but they believe in him."
I stared at Lady. Her eyes were closed. She might be grabbing the chance to nap. Seldom on stage doing anything obvious, she was working harder than anybody else. She had to be completely alert every second.
I wondered if Longshadow and Howler had any notion how exhausted she must be, if they would try to turn things around by taking advantage of that. I shivered.
The Captain nodded to himself. "We go at three in the morning. Meantime, everybody rest." His general's mask faded whenever he looked at Lady. In those moments his feelings, were pretty obvious.
I drifted off into a reverie, recalling the nightmares Lady had described in her book, all so obsessed with death and destruction, much like the ones I kept having. I was sure she was suffering those again. She was fighting sleep most of the time, trying to avoid them. I visualized Kina as Lady had described her, black and tall, naked, glistening, with four arms and eight teats, vampire fangs and nifty jewelry made from babies' skulls and severed penises. Not exactly a girl just like good old mom. I wondered if Lady had been dreaming any of the times I had glimpsed something that might have been Kina.
I started. For an instant I thought I had caught a whiff of Kina's perfume, which was the stench of rotting corpses.
There would be plenty of that here soon enough. Only the cold kept it from being really bad already.
I squeaked. Thai Dei was shaking me. Where had he come from? He looked troubled. Croaker was staring at me, too. So were the others. I had drifted right off into a nightmare, never realizing I was gone. The Captain asked, "What's the matter?"
"Bad dream."