Soldiers Live

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## 12

### Glittering Stone:
Steadfast Guardian

The being on the huge wooden throne in the heart of the fortress at the center of the stone plain is a construct. Possibly he was created by the gods, who fought their wars upon that plain. Or perhaps his creators were the builders who constructed the plain—if they were not gods themselves. Opinions vary. Stories abound. The demon Shivetya himself is not disposed to be unstinting with the facts, or is, at best, inconsistent in their distribution. He has shown his latest chronicler several conflicting versions of ancient events. Old Baladitya has abandoned all hope of establishing an exact truth and, instead, seeks the deeper range of meaning underpinning what the golem does reveal. Baladitya understands that in addition to being foreign territory the past is, as history, a hall of mirrors that reflect the needs of souls observing from the present. Absolute fact serves the hungers of only a few disconnected people. Symbol and faith serve the rest.

Baladitya’s Company career duplicates his prior life. He writes things down. When he was a copyist at the Taglian Royal Library he wrote things down. Now, nominally, he is a prisoner of war. Chances are he has forgotten that. In reality he is freer today to pursue his own interests than ever he was at the library.

The old scholar lives and works around the demon’s feet. Which has to be as close to personal heaven as a Gunni historian can imagine. If the historian does not remain too determinedly wedded to Gunni religious doctrine.

Shivetya’s motives for refusing categorical declarations may stem from bitterness about his lot. By his own admission he has met most of the gods face-to-face. His recollections concerning them are even less flattering than those spicing most of Gunni mythology, where few of the gods are extolled as role models. Almost without exception the Gunni deities are cruel and selfish and untouched by any celestial sense of rajadharma.

A tall black man stepped into the light cast by Baladitya’s lamps. “Learned anything exciting today, old-timer?” The copyist’s fuel expenses are prodigal. He is indulged.

The old man did not respond. He is almost deaf. He exploits his infirmity to its limits. Not even Blade insists that he share routine camp chores any longer.

Blade asked again but the copyist’s nose remained close to the page on which he was writing. His penmanship is swift and precise. Blade cannot decipher the complicated ecclesiastical alphabet, except for some of those characters it shares with the only slightly simpler common script. Blade looked up into the golem’s eye. That appeared to be about the size of a roc’s egg. The adjective “baleful” fit it well. Not even naive old Baladitya has ever proposed that the demon be delivered from the restraint guaranteed by the daggers nailing its limbs to the throne. Neither has the demon ever encouraged anyone to release it. It has endured for thousands of years. It has the patience of stone.

Blade tried another approach. “I’ve had a runner come from the Abode of Ravens.” He prefers the native name for the Company’s base. It is so much more dramatic than Outpost or Bridgehead and Blade is a dramatic man fond of dramatic gestures. “The Captain says she expects to acquire the needed shadowgate knowledge shortly. Something is about to break loose in Khang Phi. She wants me to get cracking getting more treasure brought up. She wants you to finish finding everything out. She’ll be moving soon.”

The copyist grunted. “He’s easily bored, you know.”

“What?” Blade was startled, then angry. The old man had not heard a word.

“Our host.” The old man did not lift his eyes from the page. It would take them too long to readjust. “He’s easily bored.” Baladitya cared nothing about the Company’s plans. Baladitya was in paradise.

“You’d think we’d be a change that would distract him.”

“He’s been distracted by mortals a thousand times before. He’s still here. None of those people are, except those remembered in stone.” The plain itself, though older and vastly slower than Shivetya, might have a mind of its own. Stone remembers. And stone weeps. “Their very empires have been forgotten. How much chance is there that this time will be different?”

Baladitya sounded a little empty. Not unreasonable, Blade thought, considering the fact that he looked into the time abyss represented by the demon all the time. Talk about vanity and chasing after wind!

“Yet he’s helping us. More or less.”

“Only because he believes we’re the last mayflies he’ll see. Excepting the Children of Night when they raise up their Dark Mother. He’s convinced that we’re his last chance to escape.”

“And all we got to do to get his help is skrag the nasty Goddess, then put his ass away for the long night.” The demon’s gaze seemed to drill right through him. “Nothing to it. Piece of cake, as Goblin used to say. Though the saying doesn’t make any literal sense.” Blade lifted his fingers to his eyebrow in a salute to the demon. Whose eyes seemed to be smouldering now.

“God killing. That should be perfect work for you.”

Blade was unsure if Baladitya had spoken or Shivetya had entered his mind. He did not like what the observation implied. It echoed too closely Sleepy’s thinking, which is why his posh job in Khang Phi is gone and he has charge of operations on the plain, having abandoned banquets and down mattresses for iron rations and a bed of cold and silent stone shared only with unhappy, withered dreams, a crazy scholar, miscellaneous thieves and a house-sized lunatic demon half as old as time.

All his adult life Blade has been driven by a hatred for religion. He has an especial abhorrence for its retailers. Considering his current whereabouts and present occupation it seems likely that he should have restrained his impulse to share his opinions.

Blade could have sworn that, for an instant, a smile played across the demon’s features.

Blade chose not to comment.

He is a man of few words. He believes there is little point to speech. He believes the golem eavesdrops on his thoughts. Unless it has become so bored with ephemerals that it no longer pays attention.

That hint of amusement again. Blade’s speculation is not valid. He should know better. Shivetya is interested in every breath every brother of the Black Company takes. Shivetya has anointed these men as the death-givers.

“You need anything?” Blade asked the old man, resting a hand on his shoulder briefly. “Before I head down below?” The contact is entirely contrived. But Baladitya cares nothing about the touch, genuine or not.

Baladitya lifted his pen from his right hand with his left, flexed his fingers. “I suppose I should eat something. I can’t recall when last I put fuel on the fire.”

“I’ll see that you get something.” The something was sure to be rice and spice and golem manna. If there was anything Blade regretted about his life, it was having lived most of it in a part of the world where a majority of the population include a vegetarian diet within their religion and those who do not mainly eat fish or chicken. Blade is ready to start at whichever end of a spit-roast pig and not stop until he reaches the other.

Blade’s command, the thieves, the Company pathfinders, includes twenty-six of the outfit’s brightest and most trusted youngsters, all Children of the Dead. They need to be both smart and trustworthy because Sleepy wants to exploit the treasures in the caverns beneath the plain and because they really have to understand that the plain itself will not forgive them if they do the wrong thing. Shivetya has extended his favor. Shivetya sees everything and knows everything inside the gates of his universe. Shivetya is the soul of the plain. No one comes or goes without Shivetya’s countenance, or at least his indifference. And in the unlikely event that Shivetya remained indifferent to an unauthorized theft, there was nowhere for a thief to run but back to the shadowgate opening on the Land of Unknown Shadows. That was the only shadowgate under control and functioning properly. That was the only shadowgate not certain to kill the thief.

It was a long stroll across the great circle surrounding the crude throne. That floor is anything but crude. It is an exact one-eightieth scale representation of the plain outside, less the memorial pillars that were added in a later age by men who failed to possess even mythologized recollections of the builders. Hundreds of manhours have gone into clearing the accumulated dirt and dust off its surface so Shivetya can more clearly discern every detail of his kingdom. Shivetya’s throne rests upon a raised wheel one-eightieth the size of this.

Decades ago, Soulcatcher’s tampering triggered an earthquake that battered the fortress and split its floor into a vast crevasse. Outside the plain the disaster destroyed cities and killed thousands. Today the only memorial of what had been a gap in the floor a dozen yards wide and thousands of feet deep is a red stripe meandering past the throne. It dwindles every day. As does Shivetya, the mechanism ruling the plain heals itself.

The great circular model of the plain rises half a yard above the rest of the floor, which exists at the level of the plain outside.

Blade dropped off the edge of the wheel. He strode to a hole in the floor, the head of stairs leading down. They descend for miles, through caverns natural and created. The sleeping Goddess Kina lies at the deepest level, patiently awaiting the Year of the Skulls and the beginning of the Khadi Cycle, the destruction of the world. The wounded Goddess Kina.

Shadows stirred along the nearby wall. Blade froze. Who? No way that could be his people. Or, what?

Fear speared through Blade. Shadows in motion often presaged cruel, screaming death. Had those things found a way into the fortress? Their merciless feasting was not a horror he cared to witness ever again. And in particular he did not want to be the main course.

“The Nef,” Blade told himself as three humanoid shapes emerged from the darkness. He recognized them despite never having seen them before. Hardly anyone did, outside of dreams. Or maybe nightmares. The Nef were incredibly ugly. Though they might have been wearing masks. The several descriptions available did not agree except as to ugliness. He counted them off. “The Washane. The Washene. The Washone.” Names Shivetya had given Sleepy years ago. What did they mean? Did they mean anything at all? “How did they get in here?” The answer might be critical. Killer shadows might exploit the same opening.

As the Nef always did, they tried to communicate something. In the past their efforts inevitably failed. But this time their appeal seemed obvious. They did not want Blade to go down those stairs.

Sleepy, Master Santaraksita, and others who have been in contact with Shivetya believe that the Nef are artificial reproductions of the beings who created the plain. Shivetya brought them into existence because he longed for a connection with something approximating those whose artifice had wrought the great engine and its pathways between the worlds, because he was lonely.

Shivetya has lost his will to live. If he should perish, whatever he has created himself will go with him. The Nef are not yet prepared to embrace oblivion, despite the endless horror and tedium existence upon the plain imposes.

Blade spread his hands at his sides in a gesture of helplessness. “You guys need to polish your communication skills.” Not a sound came from the Nef but their growing frustration became palpable. Which had been a constant from the first time anyone had dreamt of them.

Blade stared. He did try to understand. He considered the ironies of the Black Company’s adventure across the glittering plain. He was an atheist himself. His journey had brought him face-to-face with a complete ecology of supernatural entities. And Tobo and Sleepy, whom he considered reliable witnesses otherwise, claimed actually to have seen the grim Goddess Kina who, myth suggested, lay imprisoned a mile beneath his feet.

Sleepy, of course, faced her crises of faith. A devout Vehdna monotheist, she never, ever encountered any worldly sustenance for her beliefs. Though supportive evidence is thin, the Gunni religion only creaks badly under the burden of the knowledge we have unearthed. The Gunni are polytheists accustomed to having their gods assume countless aspects and avatars, shapes and disguises. So much so that, in some myths, those gods seem to be murdering or cuckolding themselves. The Gunni have the flexibility to look at every discovery, as Master Santaraksita has, and declare new information to be just another way of proclaiming the same old divine truths.

God is god, whatever his name. Blade has seen those sentiments inlaid in the wall tiles in several places in Khang Phi.

Whenever anyone strays far from Shivetya, a ball of earthy brown glow tags along. It hovers above and behind one shoulder or another. The ball does not shed much light but in what otherwise would be utter darkness they are sufficient. They are the golem’s doing. Shivetya has powers he has forgotten how to use. He might be a small god himself if he was not nailed to his ancient throne.

Blade descended nearly a thousand steps before he encountered anyone headed upward. This soldier carried a heavy pack. “Sergeant Vanh.”

The soldier grunted. Already he was winded. No one made more than one trip a day. Blade gave Vanh the bad news because he might not run into him again for days. “Had a message from the Captain. We have to step it up. She’s almost ready to move.”

Vanh mumbled the sorts of things soldiers always do. He continued his climb. Blade wondered how Sleepy planned to haul off the mountain of treasure already accumulated up top. It was, for sure, enough to finance a pretty good war.

Another thousand steps downward, repeating his message several times. He left the stair at the level everyone called the Cave of the Ancients because of the old men interred there. Blade always stopped to visit his friend Cordy Mather. It was a ritual of respect. Cordy was dead. Most of the others confined in the cave remained alive, enmeshed in stasis spells. Somehow, during the long Captivity, Mather had shed the spells confining him. And success had cost him his life. He had not been able to find his way out.

Most of the old men in the cave meant nothing to Blade or the Company. Only Shivetya knew who they were or why they had been interred. Certainly they had irked someone armed with the power to confine them. Several corpses, though, had been Company brothers when still alive. Several others had been captives before Soulcatcher buried the Company. Death had found them because, evidently, Cordy Mather had tried to wake them up. Touching the Captured without sorcerous precautions inevitably caused the death of the touched.

Blade resisted the urge to kick the sorcerer Longshadow. That madman was a commodity of incalculable worth in the Land of Unknown Shadows. The Company had grown strong and wealthy because of him. It continued to prosper. “How you doing, Shadowmaster? Looks like you’ll be here a while yet.” Blade assumed the sorcerer could not hear him. He could not recall having heard anything when he was under the enchantment himself. He could not recall having been aware in any way, though Murgen said there were times when it looked like the Captured were aware of their surroundings. “They haven’t pushed the bidding high enough yet. I hate to admit it but you really are a popular guy. In your own special way.” Not a generous or forgiving or even empathetic man, Blade stood with hands on hips staring down at Longshadow. The sorcerer looked like a skeleton barely covered by diseased skin. His face was locked into a scream. Blade told him, “They still say, ‘All Evil Dies There an Endless Death.’ Especially when they’re talking about you.”

Not far from Longshadow is the Company’s other insane sorcerer prisoner, the Howler. This one presents a greater temptation. Blade saw no value whatsoever to keeping Howler alive. The little shit has a history of treachery that goes way, way back and a character unlikely to change because of this confinement. He survived a similar Captivity before. That one endured for centuries.

Tobo did not need to learn any of the Howler’s evil crap. And Tobo’s education was the only excuse Blade had heard for letting the little ragbag live.

Blade paid his deepest respects to Mather. Cordy was a good friend for a long time. Blade owes Cordy his life. He wished the evil fortune had befallen him. Cordy wanted to live. Blade believes he is proceeding on inertia.

Blade continued his descent into the earth, past the treasure caverns that were being looted to finance the Company’s homegoing, it was hoped on a spectacularly memorable scale.

Blade is not much given to emotional vapors or seizures of fear. He has a cool enough head to have survived for years as a Company agent inside Longshadow’s camp. But as he moved deeper into the earth he began to twitch and sweat. His pace slackened. He passed the last known cavern. Nothing lay below that but the ultimate enemy, the Mother of Night herself. She was the enemy who would still be waiting once all the other, lesser adversaries had been brushed aside or extinguished.

To Kina, the Black Company is an annoying buzz in the ear, a mosquito that has gotten away with taking a sip or two of blood and has not had the good sense to get the hell away.

Blade slowed again. The light following him kept weakening. Where once he could see clearly twenty steps ahead now he could see only ten, the farther four seeming to be behind the face of a thickening black fog. Here the darkness seemed almost alive. Here the darkness felt as though it was under much greater pressure, the way water seemed to exert more as you swam deeper beneath its surface.

Blade found it harder to breathe. He forced himself to do so, deeply and rapidly, then went on, against the insistence of instinct. A silver chalice took form in the fog, just five steps below. It stood about a foot tall, a simple tall cup made of noble metal. Blade had placed it there. It marked the lowest step he had yet been able to reach.

Now each step downward seemed to take place against the resistance of liquid tar. Each step brought the darkness crushing in harder. The light from behind was too weak to reach even one step beyond the chalice.

Blade makes this effort frequently. He accounts it exercise for his will and courage. Each descent he manages to make it as far as the chalice mostly by being angry that he cannot push past it.

This time he tried something different. He threw a handful of coins collected from one of the treasure caves. His arm had no strength but gravity had not lost its power nor had sound been devoured by the darkness. The coins tinkled away down the stairwell. But not for long. After a moment it sounded like they were rolling around on a floor. Then they were silent. Then a tiny little voice from far, far away cried, “Help.”

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