Why just this one incident in more than four years?
I wanted to follow the panther, to discover what had become of it, but Smoke could not be coaxed to go. The comatose wizard had no will or ego I could detect but, apparently, he did have limits or constraints.
Funny, though. I felt no real emotion until I returned to the reality of the Palace. Then it hit me in a wave, hard, leaving me breathless. I asked, “Is whatever I see out there true?”
“We haven’t seen any evidence otherwise.” Croaker’s caution meant he had reservations. Always suspicious, our Captain. “You look bad. You see something nasty?”
“Very.” One-Eye was gone. And the Strangler had fouled himself. I wrinkled my nose. “I can use Smoke to look anywhere?”
“Almost. Some places he can’t or won’t go. And he can’t go back to any time before he went into the coma. You can catch the Annals up now, eyewitness style, if you will. But always remember to be careful about pointing him right.”
“Wow.” The implications had begun to sink in. “This is worth more than a veteran legion.” Now I knew how we had pulled off some really startling coups lately. If you can perch on your enemy’s shoulder nothing is going to go his way.
“It’s worth a lot more. And that’s why you’re going to keep your mouth shut even around your dearly beloved.”
“Does the Radisha know?”
“No. You, me and One-Eye. Maybe Goblin if One-Eye just had to share it with somebody. And that’s the limit. One-Eye found it by accident when he was trying to pull Smoke out of his coma. Smoke has been to Overlook. He’s walked around inside. He’s actually met Longshadow. We wanted to ask him some questions. We decided they could wait. You don’t tell anybody. Understand?”
“There you go being suspicious of my in-laws again.”
“I’d cut your throat.”
“I get the message, boss. Don’t brag it up to my Deceiver drinking buddies. Shit. This could win us the war.”
“It won’t hurt. As long as it’s secret. I have business with the Radisha. Practice using him. Don’t worry about working him too hard. You can’t.” He squeezed my shoulder, left the room with a stride that seemed both determined and fatalistic. Must be facing another budgetary conference. Depending on whether you were the Liberator or the Radisha the military either never had enough or always wanted too much.
So. There was just me and one halfway-dead wizard and one stinky Strangler under a linen rag. I considered using Smoke to find out what Stinky’s buddies were up to in Taglios but reasoned that the Captain would not have had him interrogated if Smoke had been able to provide useful answers. Maybe you not only had to be precise in your instructions, you had to have some idea what you were seeking. You could not find your own elbow if you could not guess what directions to give to get you there.
The point? Old Smoke was a miracle but he had major limitations. And most of those would exist right inside our own heads. We would become the beneficiaries or victims of our own imaginations.
What should I go see, then?
I was excited now. I was up for an adventure. So, what the hell? Why not go straight for the biggie? How about taking a peek at the Shadowmaster himself, Longshadow, number one boy on the Black Company shit list?
35
Longshadow could have pranced right out of my fantasies. He was a deadly freak. He was tall and thin and twitchy, given to flights of rage and subject to sudden spells resembling malarial shakes. He wore a sort of loose black floor-length chemise that concealed a deathly gauntness. He ate infrequently and then only picked. He could have been a famine victim.
Threads of silver and gold and glistening black, embroidered or woven into his robe, protected him with dozens of static sorceries. At first blush he seemed a hundred times more paranoid than Croaker. But he did have reason. There was just a whole world full of folks who wanted to roast his skinny ass and he had no friends closer than Mogaba and Blade.
The Howler was not a friend. He was an ally.
One of Longshadow’s obsessions was the Black Company. I did not understand. The kind of enemies we were should not have troubled him at all. We were no world-killers.
His face, which he kept masked except when he was alone, was skull-like. His waxy, pallid features were frozen in a permanent expression of fear. There was no guessing his birth race. His eyes were a washed out grey with splotches of pink around the edges but I don’t think he was an albino. I exploited Smoke’s ability, fluttered about through time to find out all the interesting stuff fast. I did not catch Longshadow completely out of costume once. The man did not bathe. He did not change clothing. He wore gloves all the time.
The last of the four Shadowmasters, now the Shadowmaster, he was the unquestioned tyrant of the city Shadowcatch and a demigod within his fortress Overlook. His slightest whim could set a hundred terrors and ten thousand men scrambling to appease him. And still he was a prisoner doing life without hope of parole.
Overlook is, but for one, the southernmost work of Man. I tried pushing past that fortress. Somewhere in the mists beyond Overlook is Khatovar, toward which we have marched for years, lust a glimpse would be marvelous.
Smoke refused to go any farther south.
Smoke had been crazy about Khatovar while he was still healthy. Khatovar was the reason he deserted the Radisha and Prahbrindrah Drah, years ago. His fear of Khatovar must have impressed itself upon his very flesh and soul.
Longshadow’s fortress was gargantuan. Overlook dwarfed every human construction I have ever seen, including the Lady’s monstrous tower at Charm. Already two decades in the building, Overlook’s construction had become the main industry of Shadowcatch-the city that was called Kiaulune before the coming of the Shadowmasters. Kiaulune meant Shadow Gate in the local dialect.
The builders worked day and night. They knew no holidays. Longshadow was determined that his fortress be complete before his enemies overtook him. If he won that race he believed he would become master of the world. No power of heaven or hell or earth ought to be able to reach him inside a finished Overlook. Not even the darkness that brushed him every night with its terror.
Overlook’s outer walls reared a hundred or more feet high. Where are you going to find a ladder that tall?
Brass and silver and gold characters shone on the steel plates that sheathed the rude stone of the wall face. Battalions of workmen did nothing but keep those runes polished and gleaming.
I could not read them but I knew they anchored massive defensive spells. Longshadow’s spellwork overlaid everything that was part of Overlook, layer upon layer. If he was allowed enough time every exterior surface of the fortress would be hidden beneath and behind impenetrable tangles of sorceries.
Once the sun went down Overlook became a conflagration of light. Bright crystal chambers topped every tower, making the place seem a forest of lighthouses. The crystal domes were places whence Longshadow could observe safe from his terrors. The overpowering lights left no places for shadows to hide.
He feared that which he mastered far more than anything else in the world. Even the Black Company, for him, was a buzzing mosquito of a nuisance.
Even unfinished Overlook daunted me thoroughly. What sort of hubris-driven madmen were we to chart a course that must run through and beyond that stronghold?
But Longshadow had enemies not as easily daunted as I. For some of those no earthly fortress, nor even time itself, meant much. They would devour him now or later, the moment his guard fell.