Bleak Seasons

34

Hours passed. Croaker left, then returned. Now he slapped me on the back. "See how easy it is, Murgen? Ever seen such a big trick that was this simple?"

"Nothing to it," I agreed. "Like falling off a log." Or like falling into a bottomless pit, maybe, which I have had enough involuntary practice doing.

Nothing is ever as simple as somebody tells you it is going to be. I knew this would be no exception when I tried it myself, amazing as it was. "At least now I understand how you got so damned spooky, knowing things you shouldn't."

Croaker laughed. "Go ahead." Showing off his astonishing discovery had put him into a grand mood. "Try it."

I gave him a look he chose to interpret as my not really understanding what he meant. Nothing to it. Like falling off a log. Maybe. Only One-Eye is not a very good teacher.

"Do what One-Eye showed you. Decide what you want to see. Tell Smoke. But be damned careful how you do that. You have to be precise. Precision is everything. Ambiguity is deadly."

"That's the way the magic goes in every story I ever heard, Captain. The ambiguities screw you every time."

"You think so? You might be right." I must have touched a nerve. He became thoughtful suddenly. "Go ahead."

I was reluctant. "This whole thing is too much like what keeps happening to me when I fall down the rabbit hole to Dejagore. Could Smoke be doing that to me somehow?"

Croaker shook his head. "No way. It's not the same. Go ahead. I insist. You're wasting time. Go look at something you always wanted to know about for the Annals. We'll be right here to cover you."

"How about I go look for Otto and Hagop ?"

"I know where they are. They just passed the First Cataract. They'll be here in a few days. Try something else." Hagop and Otto had spent the last three years travelling back north with a Taglian delegation and letters from Lady to those she had left behind. Their mission was to learn anything possibly known there about the Shadowmaster, Longshadow. One of the dead Shadowmasters, Stormshadow, had turned out to be a refugee from Lady's old empire, Stormbringer, previously thought dead. And two other big and nasty sorcerers long believed perished also have turned up and remain burrs under our saddles, the Howler and Lady's mad sister, Soulcatcher. And there was Shapeshifter, too, but we took care of him.

That Otto and Hagop managed to survive so incredible a journey was, to me, a major miracle. But Otto and Hagop are blessed.

"I expect they'll have whole new collections of scars to talk about."

Croaker nodded. He seemed a little grim now. A little anxious. Time to get on with my training.

An unexplained tragedy of the past caught my imagination. There had been some grotesque, horrible, senseless killings in a village called Bond that never got connected with anyone or anything, to my recollection. I was sure they had to be important somehow and was baffled that, even today, the slaughter remained unsolved and unresolved.

I gripped Smoke's hand, blanked my mind, spoke careful instructions in a whisper. And away I went, out of my body, so suddenly I almost panicked. For a moment I thought I recalled doing all this before. But I could not remember what was going to happen.

The Old Man was right. This was not the same as my unwanted plunges into my own past. In this nightmare I was aware and in control. I was a disembodied vision racing toward Bond but my mission remained clear in my mind. That was a big distinction. When I floated over Dejagore I lacked identity and control till I merged with my self of the past. Then I forgot the future.

Bond is a hamlet on the south bank of the River Main, facing the Vehdna-Bota ford. For centuries the Main has been the traditional boundary of the Taglian heartland. The peoples who live below the river share the languages and religions of Taglios but are considered only tributary cousins by the Taglians themselves.

The nonagrarian part of Bond's economy revolved around a small remount station for the military courier post. A minimal garrison of Shadar cavalrymen managed the station and kept watch on ford traffic. Bond was the kind of duty soldiers dream about. There were no officers and very little work. The river was low enough to ford only about three months a year. But the garrison got paid all year round.

Smoke's soul slipped back to that long ago disaster. I stayed with him, carrying a load of fear despite all of Croaker's reassurances.

It was very dark that night in that Bond gone by. Horror stalked out of the night and those nightmares where men are more often prey than predator. A monster padded through the hamlet, headed toward the army stable. I watched from a place where I could offer no warning.

One solitary soldier had the watch. He was nodding. Neither he nor the horses sensed their danger, The latch rose inside the stable door. No animal mind knew enough to pull a string. The soldier started awake just in time to see a dark shape with scarlet eyes hurtling toward him.

The monster fed, then padded into the night. It killed again. Screams wakened the garrison. The soldiers seized their arms. The monster, like an oversize black panther, loped to the river, swam to the northern shore.

I knew something now. The killer was a shapeshifter, the acolyte of the sorcerer Shapeshifter, whom we had destroyed the night we captured Dejagore. She got away, trapped in the animal shape.

Why just this one incident in more than four years?

I wanted to follow the panther, to discover what had become of it, but Smoke could not be coaxed to go. The comatose wizard had no will or ego I could detect but, apparently, he did have limits or constraints.

Funny, though. I felt no real emotion until I returned to the reality of the Palace. Then it hit me in a wave, hard, leaving me breathless. I asked, "Is whatever I see out there true?"

"We haven't seen any evidence otherwise." Croaker's caution meant he had reservations. Always suspicious, our Captain. "You look bad. You see something nasty?"

"Very." One-Eye was gone. And the Strangler had fouled himself. I wrinkled my nose. "I can use Smoke to look anywhere?"

"Almost. Some places he can't or won't go. And he can't go back to any time before he went into the coma. You can catch the Annals up now, eyewitness style, if you will. But always remember to be careful about pointing him right."

"Wow." The implications had begun to sink in. "This is worth more than a veteran legion." Now I knew how we had pulled off some really startling coups lately. If you can perch on your enemy's shoulder nothing is going to go his way.

"It's worth a lot more. And that's why you're going to keep your mouth shut even around your dearly beloved."

"Does the Radisha know?"

"No. You, me and One-Eye. Maybe Goblin if One-Eye just had to share it with somebody. And that's the limit. One-Eye found it by accident when he was trying to pull Smoke out of his coma. Smoke has been to Overlook. He's walked around inside. He's actually met Longshadow. We wanted to ask him some questions. We decided they could wait. You don't tell anybody. Understand?"

"There you go being suspicious of my in-laws again."

"I'd cut your throat."

"I get the message, boss. Don't brag it up to my Deceiver drinking buddies. Shit. This could win us the war."

"It won't hurt. As long as it's secret. I have business with the Radisha. Practice using him. Don't worry about working him too hard. You can't." He squeezed my shoulder, left the room with a stride that seemed both determined and fatalistic. Must be facing another budgetary conference. Depending on whether you were the Liberator or the Radisha the military either never had enough or always wanted too much.

So. There was just me and one halfway-dead wizard and one stinky Strangler under a linen rag. I considered using Smoke to find out what Stinky's buddies were up to in Taglios but reasoned that the Captain would not have had him interrogated if Smoke had been able to provide useful answers. Maybe you not only had to be precise in your instructions, you had to have some idea what you were seeking. You could not find your own elbow if you could not guess what directions to give to get you there.

The point? Old Smoke was a miracle but he had major limitations. And most of those would exist right inside our own heads. We would become the beneficiaries or victims of our own imaginations.

What should I go see, then?

I was excited now. I was up for an adventure. So, what the hell? Why not go straight for the biggie? How about taking a peek at the Shadowmaster himself, Longshadow, number one boy on the Black Company shit list?