Soldiers Live

20

Glittering Stone: Mystic Roads

Different stars tonight," Willow Swan said, lying back, staring at the sky.

"Different everything," Murgen replied. "Find me Little Boy or the Dragon's Eye."

There was no moon. There is always a moon up in the Land of Unknown Shadows.

The sky on the plain... is changeable. It may not boast the same constellation two nights running.

The weather is usually benign. Cold, of course. But seldom rainy, or worse. In my experience. But I was not concerned about rain or snow. Shadow weather worried me.

The sixteen shadowgates are equally spaced around the perimeter of the plain. From each a road of stone of a different color from the plain runs inward to the nameless fortress like a spoke in a wagon wheel. I had seen only two of the roads. One was darker than the surrounding plain, the other slightly lighter. At six-mile intervals along the spokes there were large circles of appropriately shaded material. Those got used as campgrounds though that might not have been their original function. The plain has changed with the ages. Man cannot leave anything alone. The roads were once just mystical routes between worlds. Now they are the only safety out there when the sun sets. When darkness falls the killer shadows leave their hiding places. As we gagged down our rough supper the little light glowing from charcoal fires revealed dozens of black stains oozing over the invisible dome protecting the circle.

"The Slugs of Doom," Murgen said through a mouthful of bread, waving at a nearby shadow. "Much better than the Host of the Unforgiven Dead."

"The man's suddenly developing a sense of humor," Cletus said. "This worries me."

His brother Loftus said, "Be afraid, people. Very afraid. The End Days are upon us."

"You saying it's bad jokes going to bring on the Year of the Skulls?"

I observed, "If that was the case we'd've been dead twenty years ago and the only thing you'd see up there is Kina's ugly face."

"Speaking of ugly." Lady pointed.

We had staked our few square feet of turf at the edge of the circle, where the road to the heart of the plain departed it. I had placed the key given to me by Tobo in the socket in the stone where circle and road came together. Every circle had the sockets. The key sealed the road off. It would keep shadows who got past the protective barriers anywhere else from being able to get us.

"The Nef," Murgen said.

The three creatures at the barrier were plain for everyone to see. They were bipedal but their heads were dissimilar masses of ugliness other Annalists have said they hoped were masks. I could see why—though, seeing them, I got a powerful sense of déjà vu. Maybe I ran into them in a dream. I must have had a few while I was buried. I said, "You know these guys, Murgen. See if you can talk to them."

"Yeah. And after I do that I'll fly off to the sun." No one had yet managed to communicate with the Nef, though it was obvious the creatures desperately wanted to talk. We were so alien to each other that communication was impossible.

"We must be getting a better grasp. We're seeing them when we're awake. We are awake, aren't we?" Historically, the Nef appeared only in dreams. Only in the past year did guards at the shadowgate report catching glimpses the way troops elsewhere made sightings of Tobo's pets.

Murgen ambled over warily. I observed. But I also started keeping an eye on my ravens. Until nightfall they had been almost somnolent, entirely indifferent to the world. The appearance of shadows on the barrier turned them restless, even bellicose. They hissed and coughed and produced a whole range of uncorvine noises. Some form of communication was going on because the shadows responded—though, clearly, not the way the ravens wanted.

The Unknown Shadows of Hsien did share a common ancestry with the Host of the Unforgiven Dead.

Murgen marveled, "I think I'm actually getting what they're trying to tell me."

"What's that?" My wife, I noticed, was watching the Nef intently. Could they be making sense to her, too? But she had no previous experience with the dreamwalkers. Unless while she was a sort of dreamwalker herself, while we were buried.

No, it had to be those three. They had studied us long enough to figure out how to get through. Maybe.

Murgen said, "They want us not to keep heading toward the center of the plain. They're saying we should take the other road."

"Based on what's in the Annals, I'd say they've been trying to get us to do something besides what we want from the first time anybody dreamed them. They're just never able to make themselves clear."

"That would've been me," Murgen said. "And you're right. What I've never figured out, though, is whether they're trying to save us trouble or are pushing their own agenda. It seems to work out both ways."

The tiniest hiss escaped my black raven. A warning. I turned. Uncle Doj had appeared behind Murgen, two steps back, fully armed, staring at the Nef. After watching them for a minute he drifted around the circle to the right, not quite a quarter of the way. Then he shuffled back and forth, squatted, rose up on his toes.

Then Lady went over there. She checked the view from multiple angles herself. "There is a ghost of a road, Croaker." She came back, dug out the key Tobo had given her. I walked back with her. A socket for the key had appeared in the stone surface when no one was watching. It was not there earlier. I had done a one-hundred percent walkaround of the perimeter before we settled down.

Doj said, "The boy told me not to let you waste time trying to make time. Perhaps this is why."

"Murgen. You know about shortcuts and side roads on the plain?"

"They're supposed to exist. Sleepy saw them."

Vaguely, now, I recalled something from my own first passage across the plain.

Lady wanted to plug in her key. I held her back. I said, "All right. If you feel comfortable. Doj? What do you think? Is it safe?" He was as near a real wizard as we had here.

"It doesn't feel wrong."

Not exactly a ringing endorsement. But good enough.

Lady lowered the key into place. In moments the ghost road became more substantial, began to give the impression of a golden glow that was not quite there when you tried to see it. My shoulder ornaments were not pleased. They hissed and spat and retreated to the far side of the circle, where they got into a squabble with something large and dark oozing across the surface of our protection.

Murgen said, "I think they want to enter the circle, Captain. I think they want to cut across."

"Yeah?" The auxiliary road was now more plainly seen than the main way. I mused, "We could hike straight across to the first circle right behind the Khatovar shadowgate." I went and started getting my gear together.

Doj told me, "Not before morning. Tobo told you that we have to stay here overnight."

I glanced around. Obviously, the only way I would get anybody moving again tonight would be by making myself extremely unpopular.

Khatovar had been there for ages. It would be there after the sun came up. My interest in Lisa Daele Bowalk went back farther than my interest in that place, to a city called Juniper, before she made the acquaintance of a Taken known as Shapeshifter. Justice delayed a few hours more would not set the universe wobbling.

I sighed, dropped my stuff. I shrugged. "After breakfast, then."

"Let them go through," Lady said.

"The Nef? You kidding?"

"Doj and I can handle them."

Interesting, her confidence. But it was misplaced. She knew nothing about the Nef. Unless she had met them in her dreams.

I moved people away from potential trouble, creating a clear path. "Everyone ready? Pull the key, then, Murgen." It would be intriguing to see if the plain would let him.

Doj swung Ash Wand around in front of him, exposed eight inches of blade.

The key came out of its seat. Murgen jumped back. The Nef leapt into the circle. And streaked straight across, to the side road. They hit it and never looked back.

"That's definitely weird," Willow Swan said. The dream-walkers were in a hurry but nobody dwindles that fast. Nor, normally, do they grow transparent as they go. "Slid right back into dreamland."

I wondered, "You suppose I would've slid into dreamland if I'd tried that road?" The road itself began to fade.

Nobody disagreed. Doj mused, "Tobo did say to stay put."

Middle of the night. Something wakened me. Felt like a tiny earthquake. The stars above were dancing. After another jiggle they settled down. And were no longer the stars that had been up there when I laid down. This was a different sky altogether.

"That way!" Doj insisted. It was morning, we were up and Doj insisted on heading back the way we had come.

"The fortress is that way."

"We don't want to go to the fortress," Lady reminded me. "We want to go to Khatovar."

"Which isn't back that way... is it?" Tobo had not caught up. I was not thrilled about that.

Willow Swan suggested, "You can go look, Croaker. It wouldn't take that long."

I was tired of arguing, particularly in front of a crowd. I did not want my right to lead to become more questionable than it was already. We all possessed guilty hearts. Me more than any because I bought the Company mystique more than any. "I'll take Swan's advice." I pointed here, there, choosing companions. "You guys get to go with me. Mount up. Let's go."

So we were off to the mule races.

"I don't believe it." I did not. Could not. My eyes had to be liars.

Lying at the rim of the glittering plain I stared down at another landscape with topography resembling that at Kiaulune and at the Abode of Ravens. But here there was no bustling, recovering Kiaulune. There was no fallen castle Overlook, formerly equipped with towers from which Longshadow could look down onto the glittering plain and see what was coming to get him. Nor was there a whitewashed army town with neat ranks of fields on the slopes below it. This country was feral. This country was much more damp than the other two. Wild brush and scraggly trees advanced to within yards of the crippled shadowgate. The works around that were the only recognizable human handiwork visible, and they were in ruins.

"Stay low," Doj advised when I started to rise, which would silhouette me above the skyline. I knew better than that. People who do know better generally get skragged that one time they forget or let something slide. Which is why we pound it in and pound it in and pound it in. "That jungle doesn't mean that there aren't eyes watching."

"You're right. I almost did a stupid. Anybody want to guess how old that scrub down there is? I'd say between fifteen and twenty with a bet that it's a lot closer to twenty."

Murgen wondered, "What difference does it make?"

"The forvalaka broke through this shadowgate about nineteen years ago. She got away. Soulcatcher was too busy burying our asses to chase her, shadows did get after her... "

"Oh. Yeah. She didn't go out alone when she went."

"That's my guess. Shadows got out behind her and wiped out everything we can see from here."

Murgen grunted. Lady nodded, as did Doj. They saw it the same.

Khatovar. My destination for an age. My obsession. Destroyed because we had not had the good sense to cut a young woman's throat in a place now long ago and far away.

The quality of mercy has left me a great, sour role in the theater of my own despair.

Though it is true that it had not seemed important at the time, and we were real busy trying to get out of there with our asses still attached.