Forty

Making up my mind

She never once demanded anything. Even her hints were so oblique they left everything to me to work out. Two days after our evening on the ramparts I asked the Colonel if I might see her. He said he would ask. I suspect he was under instructions. Otherwise there would have been arguments.

Another day passed before he came to say the Lady had time for me.

I closed my inkwell, cleaned my quill, and rose. “Thank you.” He looked at me oddly. “Is something wrong?”

“No. Just...”

I understood. “I don’t know either. I’m sure she has some special use for me.”

That brightened the Colonel’s day. That he could comprehend.

The usual routine. This time I entered her demense as she stood at a window opening on a world of wet gloom. Grey rain, choppy brown water, and hulking to the left, shapes barely discernible, trees clinging precariously to a high river bank. Cold and misery leaked out of that portraiture. It had a too familiar smell.

“The Great Tragic River,” she said. “In full flood. But it’s always in flood, isn’t it?” She beckoned. I followed. Since my last visit a large table had been added. Atop it was a miniature of the Barrowland, a representation so good it was spooky. You almost expected to see little Guards scurrying around the compound.

“You see?” she asked.

“No. Though I’ve been there twice, I’m not familiar with much but the town and the compound. What am I supposed to see?”

“The river. Your friend Raven evidently recognized its import.” With one delicate finger she sketched a loop well to the east of the river’s course, which curved into the ridge where we had camped.

“At the time of my triumph in Juniper the river’s bed lay here. A year later the weather turned. The river flooded continuously. And crept this way. Today it’s devouring this ridge. I examined it myself. The ridge is entirely earthen, without bones of stone. It won’t last. Once it goes, the river will cut into the Barrowland. All the spells of the White Rose won’t keep it from opening the Great Barrow. Each fetish swept away will make it that much easier for my husband to rise.”

I grunted. “Against Nature there is no defense.”

“There is. If one foresees. The White Rose did not. I did not when I attempted to bind him more securely. Now it’s too late. So, You wanted to speak to me?”

“Yes. I have to leave the Tower.”

“So. You didn’t have to come to me about that. You’re free to stay or go.”

“I’m going because there’re things I have to do. As you well know. If I walk, I’ll probably get them done too late. It’s a long hike to the Plain. Not to mention risky. I want to beg transportation.”

She smiled, and this smile was genuine, radiant, subtly different from previous smiles. “Good. I thought you would see where the future lies. How soon can you be ready?”

“Five minutes. There is one question. Raven.”

“Raven has been hospitalized at the compound at the Barrowland. Nothing can be done for him right now. Every effort will be made when an opportunity arises. Sufficient?”

I could not argue, of course.

“Good. Transport will be available. You will have a unique chauffeur. The Lady herself.”

“I...”

“I, too, have been thinking. My best next step is to meet your White Rose. I’m going with you.”

After gulping quarts of air, I managed, “They’d jump all over you.”

“Not if they don’t know me. They wouldn’t, unless they were told.”

Well, no one was likely to recognize her. I am unique in having met her and lived to brag on it. But... Gods, the heaps and bales of buts. “If you entered the null, all your spells would fall apart.”

“No. New spells wouldn’t work. Spells in place would be safe.”

I did not understand and said so.

“A simple glamor will fade on entering the null. It is being actively maintained. A spell which changes and leaves changed, but which isn’t active on entering the null, won’t be affected.”

Something off in the badlands of my mind tickled me. I could not run it down. “If you turned into a frog and hopped in there, you’d stay a frog?”

“If the transformation was actual and not just an illusion.”

“I see.” I hung a red flag on that, told me to worry it later.

“I will become a companion acquired along the way. Say, someone who can help with your documents.”

There had to be levels of deceit. Or something. I could not imagine her putting her life into my hands. I do believe I gawked.

She nodded. “You begin to understand.” “You trust me too much.” “I know you better than you know yourself. You’re an honorable man, by your own lights, with enough cynicism to believe there can be a lesser of two evils. You have been under the Eye.” I shuddered. She did not apologize. We both knew an apology would be false.

“Well?” she asked.

“I’m not sure why you want to do this. It makes no sense.”

“There is a new situation in the world. Once there were only two poles, your peasant girl and I, with a line of conflict drawn between. But that which stirs in the north adds another point. It can be seen as a lengthening of the line, with my point near the middle, or as a triangle. The point that is my husband intends destroying both your White Rose and myself. I submit that she and I ought to eliminate the greater danger before...”

“Enough. I see. But I don’t see Darling being that pragmatic. There’s a lot of hatred in her.”

“Perhaps. But it’s worth a try. Will you help?”

Having been within a stone’s throw of the old darkness and seen the ghosts astalk on the Barrowland, yes, I would do most anything to keep that dread spook from shedding his grave. But how, how, how trust her!

She did that trick they all have, of seeming to read my mind. “You will have me within the null.”

“Right. I’ll need to think some more.”

“Take your time. I can’t leave for some time.” I suspect she wanted to establish safeguards against a palace revolution.

Forty-One

A town called Horse

Fourteen days passed before we took air for Horse, a modest town lying between the Windy Country and the Plain of Fear, about a hundred miles west of the latter. Horse is a caravan stage for those traders mad enough to traipse through those two wildernesses. Of late, the city has been the logistical headquarters for Whisper’s operations. What skeleton forces were not on the road to the Barrowland were in garrison there.

Damned northbound fools were going to get wet.

We drifted in after an eventless passage, me with eyes agog. Despite the removal of vast armies, Whisper’s base was an anthive swirling around newly created carpets.

They came in a dozen varieties. In one field I saw a W formation of five monsters, each a hundred yards long and forty wide. A wood and metal jungle topped each. Elsewhere, other carpets in unusual shapes sat upon ground that looked to have been graded. Most were far longer than they were wide and bigger than the traditional. All had a variety of appurtenances, and all were enveloped in a light copper cage.

“What is all that?” I asked.

“Adaptation to enemy tactics. Your peasant girl isn’t the only one who can change methods.” She stepped down, stretched. I did the same. Those hours in the air leave you stiff. “We may get the chance to test them, despite my having backed off the Plain.”

“What?”

“A large Rebel force is headed for Horse. Several thousand men and everything the desert has to offer.”

Several thousand men? Where did they come from? Had things changed that much?

“They have.” That damned mind-reading trick again. “The cities I abandoned poured men into her forces.”

“What did you mean, test?”

“I’m willing to stop fighting. But I won’t run away from a fight. If she persists in heading west, I’ll show her that, null or no null, she can be crushed.”