Dreams of Steel

Chapter Ten

Swan lay in the shade on the bank of the Main, lazily watching his bobber float on a still, deep pool. The air was warm, the shade was cool, the bugs were too lazy to bother him. He was half asleep. What more could a man ask?

Blade sat down. "Catch anything?"

"Nope. Don't know what I'd do if I did. What's up?"

"The Woman wants us." He meant the Radisha, whom they had found waiting when they'd reached Ghoja-much to Smoke's dismay. "She's got a job for us."

"Don't she always? You tell her to stick it in her ear?"

"Thought I'd save you that pleasure." "I'd rather you'd saved me the walk. I'm comfortable."

"She wants us to drag Smoke somewhere he don't want to go."

"Why didn't you say so?" Swan pulled his line out of the water. There was no bait on his hook. "And I thought there weren't any fish in that crick." He left his pole against a tree, a statement of sorts. "Where's Cordy?"

"Probably there waiting. He was watching Jah. I told him already."

Swan looked across the river. "I'd kill for a pint of beer." They'd been in the brewery business in Taglios before the excitement swept them up.

Blade snorted, headed for the fortress overlooking Ghoja ford.

The fort stood on the south bank of the Main. It had been built by the Shadowmasters after their invasion of Taglios had been repulsed, to defend their conquests south of the river. The fortress had been overwhelmed by the Black Company after the victory north of the river. Taglian artisans were reinforcing it and beginning a companion fortress on the north bank.

Swan scanned the scabrous encampment west of the fortress. Eight hundred men lived there. Some were construction workers. Most were fugitives from the south. One large group particularly irked him. "Think Jah has figured out that the Woman is here?"

Jahamaraj Jah was a powerhungry Shadar priest. He had commanded the mounted auxiliaries during the southern expedition. His flight north had been so precipitous he'd beaten Swan's party to the ford by several days.

"I think he's guessed. He tried to sneak a messenger across last night." The Radisha, through Swan, ad forbidden anyone to cross the river. She didn't want news of the disaster reaching Taglios before its dimensions were known. "Uhm?"

"Messenger drowned. Cordy says Jah thinks he made it." Blade chuckled wickedly. He hated priests. Baiting them was his favorite sport. All priests, of whatever faith.

"Good. That'll keep him out of our hair till we figure out what to do with him."

"I know what to do."

"Political consequences," Swam cautioned. "That your solution to everything? Cut somebody's throat?"

"Always slows them down."

The guards at the fortress gate saluted. They were favorites of the Radisha and, though neither Blade nor Swan nor Mather wanted it, they commanded Taglios' defenses now.

Swan said, "I got to learn to think in the long term, Blade. Never thought we'd be back at this after the Black Company showed."

"You got a lot to learn, Willow."

Cordy and Smoke waited outside the room where the Radisha holed up. Smoke looked like he had a bad stomach. Like he'd make a run for it if he got a chance.

Swan said, "You're looking grim, Cordy." "Just tired. Mostly of playing with the runt." Swan raised an eyebrow. Cordy was the calm one, the patient guy, the one who poured oil on the waters. Smoke must have provoked him good. "She ready?" "Whenever."

"Let's do it. I got a river full of fish waiting." "Better figure on them getting grey hair before you get back." Mather knocked, pushed the wizard ahead of him.

The Radisha entered the room from the side as Swan closed the door. Here, in private, with men not from her own culture, she didn't pretend to a traditional sex role. "Did you tell them, Cordy?"

Willow exchanged glances with Blade. Their old buddy on a nickname basis with the Woman? Interesting. What did he call her? She didn't look like a Cuddles. "Not yet." "What's up?" Swan asked.

The Radisha said, "I've had my men mixing with the soldiers. They've heard rumors that the woman who was the Lieutenant of the Black Company survived. She's trying to pull the survivors together south of here."

"Best news I've heard in a while," Swan said. He winked at Blade.

"Is it?"

"I thought it was a crying shame to lose such a resource."

"I'll bet. You have a low mind, Swan."

"Guilty. Hard not to once you've had a gander at her. So she made it. Great. Gets us three off the hook. Gives you a professional to carry on."

"That remains to be seen. There'll be difficulties. Cordy. Tell them."

"Twenty-some men from the Second just came in. They'd stayed off the road to avoid the Shadowmasters' patrols. About seventy miles south of here they took a couple prisoners. The night before our guys grabbed them Kina and a ghost army supposedly attacked their camp and killed most of them."

Swan looked at Blade, at the Radisha, at Cordy again. "I missed something. Who's Kina? And what's got into Smoke?" The wizard was shaking like somebody had dunked him in icewater. Mather and Blade shrugged. They didn't know. The Radisha sat down. "Get comfortable." She chewed her lip. "This will be difficult to tell." "Then just go straight at it," Swan said. "Yes. I suppose." The Radisha collected herself. "Kina is the fourth side of the Taglian religious triangle. She belongs to none of the pantheons but terrifies everybody. She isn't named lest naming invoke her. She's very unpleasant. Fortunately, her cult is small. And proscribed. Membership is punishable by death. The penalty is deserved. The cult's rites always involve torture and murder. Even so, it persists, its members awaiting someone called the Foretold and the Year of the Skulls. It's an old, dark religion that knows no national or ethnic bounds. Its members hide behind masks of respectability. They sometimes call themselves the Deceivers. They live normal lives among the rest of the community. Anyone could belong. Few of the common people know they exist anymore."

Swan didn't get it and said so. "Don't sound much different from the Shadar Hada or Khadi avatars."

The Radisha smiled grimly. "Those are ghosts of the reality." Hada and Khadi were two aspects of the Shadar death god. "Jah could show you a thousand ways Khadi is a kitten compared to Kina." Jahamaraj Jah was a devotee of Khadi.

Swan shrugged, doubting he could tell the difference if they drew pictures. He'd given up trying to understand the welter of Taglian gods, each with his or her ten or twenty different aspects and avatars. He indicated Smoke. "What's with him? He shakes any more we'll have to change his diaper."

"Smoke predicted a Year of Skulls-a time of chaos and bloodshed-if we employed the Black Company. He didn't believe it would come. He just wanted to scare my brother out of doing something that scared him. But he's on record as having predicted it. Now there's a chance it might come."

"Sure. Come on." Swan frowned, still lost. "Let me get this straight. There's a death cult around that makes Jah and his Khadi freaks look like a bunch of nancy boys? That scares the guano out of anybody who knows who they are?"

"Yes."

"And they worship a goddess named Kina?"

"That is the most common of many names."

"Why aren't I surprised? Is there any god down here without more aliases than a two-hundred-year-old con man?"

"Kina is the name given her by the Gunni. She has been called Patwa, Kompara, Bhomahna, and other names. The Gunni, the Shadar, the Vehdna, all find ways to accept her into their belief systems. Many Shadar who become her followers, for example, take her to be the true form of Hada or Khadi, who is just one of her Deceits."

"Gah. All right. I'll bite. There's a bad-ass in the weeds called Kina. So how come me and Cordy and Blade never heard of her before?"

The Radisha appeared mildly embarrassed. "You were shielded. You're outsiders. From the north."

"Maybe so." What did the north have to do with it? "But why the panic? One garbled thing about this Kina from a prisoner who's got no reason to tell the truth? And Smoke goes to wetting his pants? And you start foaming at the mouth? I got a little trouble taking you serious."

"Point taken. You shouldn't have been shielded. I'm sending you to check out the story."

Swan grinned. He had a lever. "Not without you stop jacking us around. Tell us the whole story. Bad enough you messed with the Black Company. You think you're going to mess us around because we weren't born in Taglios... ."

"Enough, Swan." The Radisha wasn't pleased.

Smoke made a whining noise. He shook his head.

"What's with him?" Willow demanded. Much more of that weirdness and he was going to strangle the old guy.

"Smoke sees a ghost in every shadow. In your case he's afraid you're spies sent ahead by the Black Company."

"Sure. Moron! That's another thing. How come everybody is so damned twitchy about those guys? They maybe kicked ass around here heading north but that was back at the dawn of time, practically. Four hundred years ago."

The Radisha ignored that. "Kina's antecedents are uncertain. She's a foreign goddess. The legends say a prince of Shadow tricked the most handsome of the Lords of Light out of his physical aspect for a year. While he wore that he seduced Mahi, Goddess of Love, and sired Kina on her. Kina grew up more beautiful than her mother but empty, without a soul, without love or compassion, but hungry to possess them. Her hunger couldn't be satisfied. She preyed upon men and gods alike, Shadow and Light. Among her names are Eater of Souls and Vampire Goddess. She so weakened the Lords of Light that the Shadows thought to conquer them and sent a horde of demons against them. The Lords of Light were so pressed they begged Kina for help. She did help, though why she did isn't explained. She met the demons in battle, overthrew them, and devoured them and all their wickedness."

The Radisha paused a moment. Then, "Kina became much worse than she had been, gaining the names Devourer, Destroyer, Destructor. She became a force beyond the gods, outside the balance of Light and Shadow, enemy of all. She became a terror so great Light and Shadow joined forces against her. Her father himself tricked her into falling into an enchanted sleep."

Blade muttered, "Makes as much sense as the story of any other god. Meaning it don't."

Squeaking, Smoke said, "Kina is a personification of that force some call entropy." To the Radisha, "Correct me if I'm wrong."

The Radisha ignored him. "Before Kina fell asleep she realized she'd been tricked. She took a huge breath, exhaled a minute fraction of her soul-essence, no more than a ghost of a ghost. That specter wanders the world in search of living vessels it can possess and use to bring on the Year of the Skulls. If that avatar can free enough souls and cause enough pain, Kina can be wakened."

Swan chuckled like an old woman scolding. "You believe any of that stuff?"

"What I believe doesn't matter, Swan. The Deceivers believe. If the rumor spreads that Kina has been seen, and there's any evidence to support it, they'll preach a crusade of murder and torture. Wait!" She raised a hand. "The Taglian people are ripe for an outburst of violence. By damming the normal discharge for generations they've created a reservoir of potential violence. The Deceivers would like that to explode, to bring on the Year of the Skulls. My brother and I would prefer to harness and direct that ferocity."

Blade grumbled about the absurdities of the theological imagination and why didn't people have sense enough to smother would-be priests in their cradles ?

The Radisha said, "We don't think the Deceivers have a formal, hierarchical priesthood. They seem to form loose bands, or companies, under an elected captain. The captain appoints a priest, an omen reader, and so forth. His authority is limited. He has little influence outside his band unless he's done something to gain a reputation."

Blade said, "They don't sound so bad to me."

The Radisha scowled. "The main qualification of a priest seems to be education and probity toward his own kind. The bands indulge in crimes of all sorts. Once a year they share out their spoils according to the priest's estimation of the members' contributions toward the glory of Kina. To support his decisions, in the event of dispute, the priest keeps a detailed chronicle of the band's activities."

"Fine and dandy," Swan said. "But how about we get to what you want us to do? We supposed to drag Smoke around to see if we can sniff out what really happened to the Shadowmasters' soldiers?"

"Yes."

"Why bother?"

"I thought I just explained..." The Radisha controlled herself. "If that was a true apparition of Kina we have bigger troubles than we thought. The Shadowmasters may be the lesser half."

"I warned you!" Smoke squealed. "I warned you a hundred times. But you wouldn't listen. You had to bargain with devils."

"Shut up." The Radisha glared. "I'm as tired of you as Swan is. Go find out what happened. And learn what you can about the woman Lady, too."

"I can handle that," Swan said, grinning. "Come on, old buddy." He grabbed Smoke's shoulder. He asked the Radisha, "Think you can manage Jahamaraj Jah without us?"

"I can manage him."

Mounted, ready to ride, waiting for Blade and Smoke, Swan asked, "Cordy, you get the feeling you're out in the woods in the middle of the night and everybody's doing their damnedest to hide the light?"

"Uhm." Mather was more the thinker than Willow or Blade. "They're afraid if we know the whole story we'll desert. They're desperate. They've lost the Black Company. We're all that's left."

"Like the old days."

"Uhm."

The old days. Before the coming of the professionals. When their adopted homeland had made them reluctant captains because the feuding cults couldn't tolerate taking orders from native nonbelievers. A year in the field, playing blind lead the blind, overcoming political shenanigans daily, had convinced Swan that Blade had a point, that it wouldn't hurt the world a bit if you rid it of a few hundred thousand selected priests.

"You buy that Kina stuff?"

"I don't think she told any lies. She just forgot to tell the whole truth."

"Maybe when we get Smoke out there forty miles from nowhere we can squeeze it out of him."

"Maybe. As long as we don't forget what he is. We scare him too much and he's liable to show us what kind of wizard he is. Button it. They're coming."

Smoke looked like he was headed for the gallows. Blade looked as unhappy as ever. But Swan knew he was pleased. Blade figured he was going to get a chance to kick some deserving asses.