Soldiers Live

103 Beside the Cemetery: Search for a Lost Soul

I had been in the neighborhood of necromantic activities before, and other high-order divining, but never any closer than I got that night. I do not plan to get that close again. If my honey wants somebody handy to save her sweet butt when she gets in trouble, I will tie a long rope to her ankle and attach the other end to a horse. If something goes sour I will swat the horse’s butt.

This séance did not go well. And before it was over I got a much uglier vision of that place of bones that had claimed so many of the dreams of Murgen and my beloved.

The smell was bad but the cold was worse. I have never felt such cold. I roasted myself beside a bonfire for hours after the summoning was over but mortal flames did little to defeat that bitter chill. It was so bad we did not undertake the Captain’s raid that night or even the next and when we did we went only because Her Highness began wondering publicly if us slackers were waiting for summer weather.

Murgen, Sleepy and I were present at the summoning. No one else was invited, not even Shukrat or Suvrin or any of Sahra’s friends. And it started going bad right away. Right after starting Lady raised a hand to massage her right temple. Soon afterward I began to catch fleeting, random impressions of things that were not there. The cold came first, then the smell. Before I saw anything there were several moments when my balance became very iffy.

Lady grew more and more excited as things continued to refuse to go the way she wanted. She started over twice. And when she finally did storm ahead she did not get where she wanted to go. Eventually she gave up. But not before the rest of us had gotten a good strong whiff of Kina’s charnel dreams.

“I’m sorry,” Lady told Tobo. “Kina keeps trying to get at me through our connection. The more power I siphon from her the more easily she can touch me.”

Not good. We could have Lady turn kickass powerful—and be in thrall to the Goddess when she did.

She seemed to read my mind. She gave me a dirty look. “The bitch isn’t going to get a hold on me.”

I considered reminding her of whom we were speaking. The Mother of Deceit. Kina did not need control where she could manipulate. And she could manipulate whole populations. In her sleep. Instead, I asked, “Did we find out anything about Sahra?”

Lady’s temper was not improving. “Certainly not what we would’ve if that old devil-sow hadn’t decided to wreck our game.” Her mind had been affected somehow. She seemed almost drunk. “We couldn’t raise Sahra. Couldn’t even touch her. Which leaves the matter’s resolution ambiguous.” Her speech continued slurred, she was aware of it, yet she persisted in trying to use difficult words. “I think she’s dead. If she was alive Tobo and the hidden folk would’ve found her. Nothing hides from the Black Hounds for long.”

“Soldiers live,” I whispered. “It ain’t right, something like that happening.” But Fortune does not care. Unless Fortune gets a laugh out of human pain. “There has to be more meaning...”

“You going mystical on us at this late date, Croaker?” Sleepy snapped. “You’re the one who always says nothing has any meaning we don’t put into it ourselves.”

“Sure as shit sounds like me, don’t it? Let’s go work out our frustrations by kicking Mogaba’s antique ass.”

Sleepy gave us the once-over, unwilling to send us out while we were in so bleak a mood. We might be dangerous to ourselves.

She was no happier with us later. We did not improve, any of us. Finally, she swallowed her reservations and told us to go.

Howler had completed a large carpet capable of moving twenty passengers. Tonight it carried sixteen of those, plus freight. Amongst the sixteen were both elder Voroshk, a number of commando-trained soldiers from Hsien and Murgen. Murgen had been zombielike since Lady’s failed ritual. He had overheard her saying she thought Sahra was dead.

I had urged him to stay behind but he insisted on joining us.

I should have stood fast. He could not help but be a liability.

Tobo was less distracted. He was too involved with Shukrat to be obsessed about his mother being missing. Still, he would bear watching.

Lady and I dressed up in full costume, with Voroshk apparel over the black Widowmaker and Lifetaker armor. My two ravens tagged along. Arkana flew with us, being tested. Which she understood fully.

Down below, dark things were on the move. They had been since nightfall.

Taglios never sleeps. Tonight those with reasons to be out after dark would have cause to worry about what might be lurking in the shadows. Hey, Mogaba. Look out. Darkness always comes.

We were still climbing away from camp when I eased over next to Lady. We flew knee to knee, our Voroshk apparel whipping in the breeze for twenty yards behind us. First we discussed which of our companions needed watching the closest, then we revisited the failed attempt to contact Sahra’s spirit. For the twentieth time. Lady insisted, “I do believe she’s out there, just as desperate to make contact with us as we were to make contact with her. But the ugly Goddess wants to keep us apart.”

“Is Kina awake?”

“More than she has been for a long, long time. At least since Goblin went down there. Maybe since the days when she sensed her doom afoot and commenced her war on us ere ever we entered this country.”

Ere ever? Wow. “I have a question on another subject. It’s been bothering me for a long time but I’ve never quite been able to put the words together right.”

“Artist.”

“Power junkie.”

“What’s your question, Old Style?”

“What happened to Soulcatcher’s shadows?”

Lady looked at me blankly.

“Come on. The old brain can’t have slowed down that much. She was an accomplished shadowmaster. She didn’t have a lot of shadows left because Tobo’s pets kept picking them off. She stopped trying to use them against us. But she still had some hidden away somewhere. Saved for a rainy day.”

Lady growled, “It couldn’t have gotten any stormier than it did.” But she was not arguing. She had her mind wrapped around the question. “My bet is that the Unknown Shadows finished them all off. There aren’t any killer shadows left. If there were we’d still be hearing reports of unexplained deaths.”

“Maybe.” Probably. If they were out there anywhere the excitement the shadows would cause would be much greater than the numbers justified. The peoples of the Taglian territories had a long history of suffering from killer shadows.

Even so, I moved up until I was flying hip to hip with Tobo, an eventuality Shukrat found distasteful. She drifted away. Rather haughtily adolescent, I thought.

“I don’t plan to take over your life.” I told the boy about my concerns.

He seemed to agree that they were valid. “I’ll find out if there’s any reason to worry.”

I fell back until I rejoined Lady.

She asked, “What did he say?”

“He’ll check it out.”

“You don’t sound real happy about that.”

“He said it the way you do when you agree with somebody just so you don’t have to spend time with them fussing over something that doesn’t bother you.”