Glen Cook - Soldiers Live

Man, he must have put some artful protective spells onto that thing.

I gathered the spear, went and made sure that I was securely attached to my post, then gave it the command to take me back to base point.

We wobbled down out of the sky like a family of mangy buzzards. My Voroshk clothing still had not healed completely. The girls were more tattered than I. The blast had caught them climbing the stairwell. They had bruises over most of their bodies.

The real miracle was how well all the posts had come through, though none remained unscathed.

The Grove of Doom rose to meet us, welcoming us like a mother greeting lost children.

Bizarre thoughts and images kept worming into my mind now. They worried me. They made me doubt that Kina was actually gone, not just in hiding.

Jokingly, Shukrat told me what I ought to be worried about was Kina’s father and husband wanting to get even. I did not laugh. To me it seemed like a worthy concern.

The Grove of Doom was empty. Of humanity. But some birds had moved in already and there were a few small animals in the underbrush now.

There was no sense of grim foreboding about the place anymore.

“We did it,” I sighed. “Finally. For real. No more Kina to torment the worlds.”

Not having spent their lives under the threat of the Year of the Skulls, the girls were less excited.

The white crow settled on a nearby branch, divested itself of a dirty feather. “Are you sure?” The beast was having lots of fun tickling my fears. She and I seemed to be headed for a long and unpleasant relationship—unless I kept my promise to Shivetya.

I said, “If there was any place in this world where Kina’s survival would manifest itself, that would be here. This place has been almost a part of her since her cult began. And that might have been here. I don’t think she could disengage herself from the Grove even if she wanted to.”

“Then let’s get going,” Shukrat said.

Arkana sneered, “She can’t wait to get her hands on Tobo again.” She was not being mean-spirited. And Shukrat’s counterfire included a mention of Aridatha Singh and Arkana’s terminal timidity. Which did turn Arkana serious.

“Hey, Pop. What do you think Kina being gone will mean to the Daughter of Night?” Walking on eggshells. But worried by the glances she had seen Singh lay upon the girl, not entirely believing that every man reacted like that. “Is she going to turn normal?”

Shukrat showed a sudden interest, too.

“I don’t know, baby doll. I worry, though. She’s been connected to Kina from the second she was conceived. Seems like to her it would be about like you or me having our liver ripped out.”

I was more worried about my wife. Her losing her connection to Kina would devastate her. Everything she was, in her own heart, was tied up in her being the terrible sorceress. Without Kina to leech from she would be just another middle-aged woman gone dumpy and grey.

The weather had been problematic all the way up from the shadowgate. We had had to skirt rain storms and thunder-heads again and again. That had cost us more than a day.

Now, only twenty miles out, there was no evading the weather. Except by going up way high, where it was icy cold and almost impossible to breathe, then zigging back and forth between seething mountains of cloud while being tossed and taunted by turbulence. Shukrat and Arkana were dead set against getting caught aloft in a thunderstorm. Arkana told me, “Think what might happen if you got hit by lightning.”

I did not think long. There was no one I wanted to see badly enough to have my post blow up between my legs. I headed for the ground. We holed up in a Gunni farming village where the locals treated us with the same cautious respect they would have shown a trio of nagas, the evil serpent people Gunni myth has living deep underground but surfacing to plague humanity on numerous occasions, always a couple, three villages away.

We did not steal any of their babies or maidens, nor their sacred cattle, nor even their sheep. I found it interesting that they were sufficiently flexible religiously to raise sheep for sale to folks like the Vehdna, who were going to gobble them right down.

The lightning quit stomping around soon after midnight. We left our hosts with coin enough to have them blessing our names. Which we never mentioned.

There was no lightning now but there was a steady, light rain. The Voroshk apparel helped, but only some. I was cold and miserable and my pet crow, now riding right in front of me in order to get under a fold of my cloak, was so far gone in the miseries that it no longer bothered to complain.

The Company barracks seemed both unnaturally quiet and abnormally alert. Armed sentries appeared everywhere. “Looks like Suvrin’s worried about an attack.”

“Something must have happened.”

I hovered. “You girls sense anything?”

“Something definitely isn’t right,” Arkana said. “I don’t know what.”

“We’d better find out.” Gone less than two weeks and everything had gone to hell?

Survin explained. I controlled myself and did not run off to see Lady before I got the whole story. Suvrin told me, “General Singh has Tobo in a cell that’s isolated so the Unknown Shadows can’t reach him for instructions. Singh won’t let anyone visit Tobo. We do know the kid is hurt, though.”

“Obviously. Or he wouldn’t put up with this. He tried something stupid?”

“Oh, yes. And I don’t have the horses to get him out of it.”

“Now you do. If you want to bother. What about Lady?”

“We don’t know what happened. Nobody was there. And I’ve had no reports recently. Last I heard, she was conscious but sullen and unresponsive. And the girl is worse. Your effort was successful?”

“Pretty much. Which probably explains Lady and Booboo.” I did not expand. “It feels creepy around here.”

“Gets more that way every night. Tobo’s friends aren’t happy. And they get unhappier by the hour. But Aridatha isn’t intimidated.”

“We’ll see if we can’t change that. After I see my wife.” Or the person who used to be my wife.

I took Arkana with me. Just in case. “Don’t say anything. Just stay in the background and cover me,” I told her.

There was a guard outside my quarters but he was not there to keep anyone in. Probably not to keep anyone out, either. He was an early-warning marker for Suvrin. He and I exchanged nods. He broke Arkana’s heart by failing to notice that she was an attractive young woman. I guess that was supposed to be obvious despite the Voroshk outfit.

Lady sat at a small table. She stared into nothingness. At some time she had been playing a solitaire-type card game but had lost interest long ago. The lamp beside her was almost drained of oil. Black smoke boiled off it because its wick needed trimming.

Wherever she was looking, it was plain she saw nothing but despair.

She had lost all interest in maintaining her appearance.

I laid my good hand on her right shoulder. “Darling. I’m back.”

She did not respond right away. Once she did recognize my voice she pulled away. “ You did it,” she said, more thinking out loud than actually speaking to me. “ You did something to Kina.” Only in the “you” was there any human emotion.

I glanced back at Arkana, to see if she was paying attention. This would be a critical moment. “I killed her. Just the way we contracted to do.” If there was any fragment of the Goddess in her now, that ought to provoke a reaction.

It did but not the physical attempt at revenge I would have preferred. Almost.

She just started crying.