Glen Cook: Bleak Seasons

Croaker looked up, puzzled, when I laid the white feather in front of him and said, “The books are gone. And there are Deceivers lost in there. At least one dead one and one still alive.”

“Gone?” He plucked the feather off the document he was studying.

“Somebody took them.”

His distress was apparent only because his hand began to shake. “How?”

“They just walked in off the street and carried them away.” I did not for a moment consider the possibility that someone inside the Palace had visited Smoke’s books.

He said nothing for a while. “What perfect timing.” Another silence. “What’s this feather?”

“Maybe a message. Maybe just a lost feather. I found one like it when I discovered that the Widowmaker armor had disappeared from hiding in Dejagore.” “A white feather?”

“From an albino crow.” I ran through my catalog of encounters, real and possibly imagined.

His hand shook again. “You never actually met her. But you recognized her? She was here the night the Deceivers struck? And you never said anything?”

“I forgot that. That was the worst night of my life, Captain. That night has twisted everything else around me...”

He gestured for silence. He thought. I stared. He was nothing like the Croaker who had been Company physician and Annalist when I joined up. After a while, he muttered, “That must be it.”

“What?”

“The voice you encountered whenever you were pulled back to Dejagore. Think. Was it inconsistent?”

“I don’t think I understand.”

“Did it seem like it might be different people talking all the time?”

Now I got it. “I don’t think so. It did seem to have different attitudes and styles sometimes.”

“The bitch. The sneaking bitch. Always playing another game. I won’t swear this for sure, Murgen, but I think the root mystery behind you tumbling all over time must have been Soulcatcher playing.”

Not a wholly original theory to me. Soulcatcher rated high on my own suspects list. Motive was my big stumbling block. I could not figure a “why Murgen?” for anybody, Soulcatcher included.

“Where is she now?” Croaker asked.

“I don’t have the foggiest.”

“Can you find out?”

“Smoke balks every time I try to head her way.”

Croaker considered that. “Try again.”

“You’re the boss.”

“As long as it suits everybody’s convenience. You sure your in-laws won’t go home?”

“They’re going wherever I go.”

“Tell them we’ll be on the road before the end of the week.”

“I look forward to that like a case of the piles.” I took my white feather and stomped off for a session with the fire mar’ shall.

I did not go straight there. I stopped by the apartment, collected a flask of tea, a gallon of water, a basket of fried chicken and fried fish, rice and some of Mother Gota’s special baked rocks. I expected a long session. There were things I wanted to do beyond my expected swift rebuff in a search for Soulcatcher.

Smoke seemed unchanged. As always. I wondered what he would remember if, as sometimes happened, one day he just woke up from his coma. I hear tell people have done that even after being under years longer than Smoke has.

I filled my stomach with water before I left the apartment. I took in more fluid when I reached Smoke. I went to work.

Drifting. Quick check of all the villains. Mogaba and Longshadow, Howler and Narayan Singh and the Daughter of Night were all acceptably located, either at Overlook or Charandaprash. Blade was skirting the Shindai Kus with maybe twelve hundred men, trying to get behind the Prahbrindrah Drah, but the Prince had a screen of light cavalry out far enough to give him plenty of warning. The man had a knack.

Before I carried out my obligation to look for Soulcatcher I took Smoke back in time to see just how early I could find and spy upon some of the principals. I wanted to see what had happened that night I had been held captive and tortured. I wanted to unveil the details of Mogaba’s defection.

I found that I could not go back that far.

I recalled that raft on the lake, Mogaba cursing in the darkness. That had to be it. He should not have been there. What honest mission could have taken him ashore? Had he changed allegiances while still holding Dejagore for the good guys? Was his deal already made when Croaker faced him down? Did he meet the Howler out there, far enough away that Goblin and One-Eye would not detect the sorcerer’s flying carpet?

Maybe. And if he had that might explain why even Sindawe and Ochiba were willing to abandon him.

All of us would be dead already and the war long since lost had Longshadow been in a position to seize that moment.

The cold claws of death may have come closer than ever I had suspected.

I wish I could have had eyewitness evidence, though.

Smoke can be tricked. And he can be driven by a sufficiently-determined will.

From the frontiers of past time I raced toward the night of my despair. I did not drive him to the center of its evil, though. Instead, I slowed and drifted into an earlier hour, as the Stranglers first approached the Palace and in best Deceiver form used two of their number, disguised as holy prostitutes of Bashra out to perform their obligated random acts of joy, to get close to the Guards.

But that was not the history I wanted to review. I brought him forward to the moments of my own interlude upon the sallyport steps. I watched myself emerge from the Palace, vacantly settle to the stone. The seizure lasted scarcely a minute, for all the time I spent amongst the horrors of yesteryear.

Now the slick move. The focus upon the woman in the shadows across the way, behind the hairy Shadar. The lock onto her despite Smoke’s increasing anxiety and spiritual wriggling.

I never got to know Smoke in full life but, by most accounts, he had been a pure chickenshit, inalterably opposed to anything that might involve even the most minor risk to anyone in the court wizard or fire marshal rackets. Cowardice must have run right down to the foundations of his being because he writhed like a worm on a fishhook the whole time I watched Soulcatcher loot his library.

She had no trouble with confusion spells. She had none with Stranglers, either, though she did encounter a band. They just gaped at her briefly, then decided their best interests ought to lead them elsewhere.

She seemed unaware of my scrutiny, unlike that time in the wheatfield. Could it be that even she was unaware of the secret of Smoke?

Wouldn’t that be lovely?

I watched her for a long time, even after she departed the Palace. Smoke resisted every second.

Then I went back and had a drink and a snack before I tackled the more interesting business of tracking Goblin down and, to slake my own curiosity, having a look at the final falling out between Croaker and Blade. I had been unable to find witnesses to the actual explosion.

To track Goblin I went back to the last time I saw the runt myself, then followed him forward in time. Soon after having helped me out of one of my plunges into yesterday Goblin walked out of his quarters carrying one modest bag, hiked to the waterfront, boarded a barge manned by trustworthy Taglians who had become professional soldiers, and drifted down the river. Right now-approximately today-he was in the heart of the delta, transferring the barge’s cargo, himself and most of the Taglians, to a deep-sea vessel wearing flags and pennons entirely unknown to me. Off on the sodden shore flocks of Nyueng Bao children and a handful of lazy adults watched as though this business of outsiders was the greatest entertainment they had encountered in years. Despite my familiarity with the tribe they all looked inscrutably alien in their native context, more so than they had in Dejagore where we all had been out of place.