Glen Cook: Shadow Games

How can the world be so damned quiet and bright and cheerful-looking when so many men just died here? Look at that mess. Right down there, fifty dead guys in a patch of wildflowers. Going to smell the stink for forty miles in a couple days.

How come this is taking so long? Am I going to be one of those guys who makes a career out of croaking?

Something out there. Something moving. Way out. Crows circling... My old friend the stump, crossing the plain of the dead on a holiday stroll. Stepping light, though. In a good mood. What was that before? Not yet time? Crows? This critter Death? I been looking my own death in the eye all the way down here?

Carrying something. Yeah, a box. About a foot by a foot by a foot. Remember noticing that before but not paying much attention. Never heard of Death carrying a box. Usually a sword or a scythe.

Whatever the hell it is, it’s here to see me. Headed straight for me. Hang in there, Croaker. Maybe there’s new hope for the dead.

Geek up on the lance getting all bent out of shape. I don’t think he’s happy about developments.

Getting closer now. Definitely no walking stump. A people, or something walking on two legs, very short. Funny. Always looked bigger from a distance. Close enough now we ought to be eyeball to eyeball, if I could see any eyes inside that hood. It’s like there’s nothing in there at all.

Kneeling. Empty hood, yes, inches away. Damned box right beside me.

Voice like a very slight breath of a breeze in spring willows, soft, gentle, and merry. “Now it’s time, Croaker.” Half a titter, half a chuckle. A glance up at the critter skewered on the lance. “And it’s time for you too, you old bastard.”

Completely different voice. Not just a different tone or a different inflexion, but an entirely different voice.

I guess all the other dead ones being alive set me up for it. I recognized her instantly. Almost as if something inside me had been expecting her. I gasped, “You! That can’t be!” I tried to get up. “Soulcatcher!” I don’t know what the hell I thought I was going to do. Run away? How? Where to?

The pain ripped through me. I sagged.

“Yes, my love. Me. You went away without finishing it.” Laughter that was a young girl’s giggle. “I have waited a long time, Croaker. But she finally exchanged the magic words with you. Now I avenge myself by taking from her what is more precious than life itself.” Again the giggle, like she was talking about some simple practical joke with no malice in it.

I had no strength to argue.

She made a lifting gesture with one gloved hand. “Come along, my sweet.”

I floated up off the ground. A crow landed on my chest and stared off in the direction I began to move, as though it were in charge of navigation.

There was a good side. The pain faded.

I did not see the lance and its burden move, but sensed that it too was in motion. My captor led the way, floating, too. We moved very fast.

We must have been a sight for anyone watching.

Darkness nibbled around the edge of consciousness. I fought it, fearing it was the final darkness. I lost.

Mad laughter rolled out of that high crystal room on top of that tower at Overlook. Somebody was tickled silly about the way things were going up north.

“That’s three of them down, half a job done. And the hard half at that. Get the other three and it’s all mine.”

More insane mirth.

The Shadowmaster gazed out at the brilliant expanse of whiteness. “Is it time to release you from your prison, my beauties of the night? Time to let you run free in the world again? No, no. Not just this moment. Not till this island of safety is invulnerable.”

The plain is filled with the silence of stone. Nothing lives there. But in the deep hours of the night shadows flutter among the pillars and perch atop the columns with darkness wrapped about them like cloaks of concealment.

Such nights are not for the unwary stranger. Such nights the silence of stone is sometimes broken by screams. Then the shadows feast, though never do they sate the raging hunger.

For the shadows the hunt is ever poorer. Sometimes months pass before an unwise adventurer stumbles into the place of glittering stone. The hunger worsens with the years and the shadows eye the forbidden lands beyond. But they cannot go, and they cannot starve to death, much as they might wish to die. They cannot die, for they are the undead, bound by the silence of stone.

It is immortality of a sort.