Golden caverns where old men sat beside the way, frozen in time, immortal but unable to move an eyelid. Madmen they, some covered with fairy webs of ice as though a thousand winter spiders had spun threads of frozen water. Above, an enchanted forest of icicles grew downward from the cavern roof.
So Murgen described it once upon a time, decades ago. The description remained apt, though the light was not as golden as I expected and the delicate filigrees of ice were denser and more complex. The old men seated against the walls, caught up in the webs, were not the wide-eyed madmen of Murgen’s visions, though. They were dead. Or asleep. I did not see one open eye. Nor did I see one face I recognized.
“Willow. Who are these people?” The bitter wind continued to rush through the cavern, which was a dozen feet high and nearly as wide, with a relatively flat floor, side to side.
It sloped with the length of the cavern. It looked like ancient, frozen mud covered with a pelt of fine frost fur. Water had run through the cavern in some epoch before the coming of men.
“These ones? I don’t know. They were here when we came down.”
I leaned closer but was careful not to touch. “These caves are natural.”
“They have that look.”
“Then they’ve been down here all along. They were here before the plain was built.”
“Possibly. Probably.”
“And whoever buried Kina knew about them. So did the Deceivers chased here by Rhaydreynak. Hunh! This one is definitely deceased. Naturally mummified but definitely gone.” The corpse was all dried out. Bare bone showed at a folded knee and tattered elbow. “These others? Who knows? Maybe the right sorcery could get them up and running around like Iqbal’s kids.”
“Why would we get them up? We’re here to get the guys that me and Catcher buried. Right? They’re on up there.” He pointed upslope, where the light was even less golden, becoming almost an icy blue.
The light was not bright. Not nearly so much so as in the vision I had experienced. Maybe it was more a psychic witchlight than a physical one, more suited to the dreamwalker’s eye. I mused, “They might be able to tell us something interesting.”
“I’ll tell you something interesting,” Swan muttered to himself. In a normal voice, for my benefit, he said, “I don’t think so. At least I don’t think it would be anything any of us would want to hear. Catcher took extreme pains to avoid even touching them. Getting the captives past without disturbing them was the hardest work we did.”
I bent to examine another of the old men. He did not look like he belonged to any race I knew. “They must be from one of the other worlds.”
“Maybe. There’s a saying where I grew up: ‘Let sleeping’ dogs lie.’ Sounds like exquisitely appropriate advice. We don’t know why they were put down here.”
“I have no intention of releasing any deviltry but our own. These men here aren’t the same as those.”
“There were several different groups last time. I doubt that that’s changed. I got the feeling that they were dumped here at different times. See how much less ice there is around these guys? Makes me think it takes centuries to accumulate.”
“Ow!”
“What?”
“I banged my head on this damned rock icicle thing.”
“Hmm. I must’ve overlooked it somehow.”
“Get smart and I’ll punch you in the kneecap, Lofty. Does it feel like it’s colder in here than it ought to be?” It was not my imagination and not the icy wind, either.
“Always.” His grin had gone away. “It’s them. I think. Starting to realize somebody’s here. It keeps building up. It can get on your nerves if you pay any attention to it.”
I could feel the growth of whatever it was. Insanity becoming palpable, I suppose. That was the impression, anyway.
“How come we’re able to move around in here?” I asked. “Why aren’t we frozen?”
“We’d probably end up that way if we stayed long enough to fall asleep. These people all had to be unconscious when they were brought down here.”
“Really?” We were up where there was less ice. The frost on the floor still betrayed the tracks left by Soulcatcher and Willow Swan years ago. The old men here were different. They resembled Nyueng Bao, except for one, who had been tall, thin and extremely pale. “But they don’t stay asleep?” Several pairs of open eyes seemed to track me. I hoped it was my imagination, stimulated by the spookiness of the cave. I never actually saw any movement.
Footsteps.
I jumped hip-high to a short elephant before I realized that it had to be Sahra and the Radisha and whoever else had decided not to participate in all those exciting projects that were underway upstairs. “Go keep those people from stomping in here and messing everything up. I’ll get an idea of the layout and try to figure out what we’ll have to do.”
Swan scowled and growled and grunted, then minced carefully back down the slight slope toward the stairwell. He talked to himself all the way. And I did not blame him. Even I thought nothing ever went right for him.
I took a step in the direction the old footprints led. My boots went out from under me. I hit hard, then slid downhill until I caught up with Swan, who did a convincing job of acting amused after he stopped me. “You all right?”
“Bruised my side. Hurt my wrist.”
“I shoulda told you. That floor can be pretty slippery where there’s a lot of frost.”
“You’re lucky I don’t swear.”
“Uhm?”
“You forgot on purpose. You’re as bad as One-Eye or Goblin.”
“Did I just hear my name taken in vain?” One-Eye’s voice, punctuated by rasping panting more suitable to a lunger, came from the shadows down where the stair intercepted the cavern.
“God is Great, God is Good. God is the All-Knowing and All-Merciful. His Plan is Hidden but Just.” And save me from the Mystery of His Plan because all I ever get is the Misery of His Plan. “What is he doing down here?” I asked Swan. “I know. I’ll leave him behind. I know I’m definitely not going to carry him up out of here just so he doesn’t suffer another stroke from the effort. Hit him over the head when he isn’t looking.” I began moving deeper into the cave again. “I’m going to try this one more time.” Beneath my breath I continued my conversation with God. As usual, He did not trouble Himself to defend His Works to me. My fault for being a woman.
I nearly missed the transition from the ancient Nyueng Bao types to Company men because the first few modern bodies belonged to Nyueng Bao bodyguards. I halted only when I reached and recognized a Nyueng Bao bodyguard named Pham Quang. I studied him for a moment.
I backed up carefully.
When you looked for it, the boundary was evident. My brothers and their allies had several centuries’ less frost accumulation upon them. They had only just begun to develop the delicate webbings that encased the older bodies. That seemed awfully fast, actually, considering how long some of the others must have been buried. Possibly Soulcatcher had indulged in a little artistry during her visit.
Interspersed with my brothers were several bodies so ancient that they had become completely cocooned. I intuited them as bodies only because the chrysalises slumped just like the Captured did.
A thought. It might be worthwhile having One-Eye along after all. Down here Soulcatcher might have taken time to set a trap or two, just for the devil of it.
The Nar generals Isi and Ochiba sat against the cave wall opposite Pham Quang. Ochiba’s eyes were open. They did not move but did seem fixed on me. I hunkered down, got as close as I could without touching him.
Those brown pools were moist. There was no dust on their surfaces, nor any frost. They had opened quite recently.
A chill crawled down my spine. A very creepy feeling came over me. I felt like I was walking among the dead. In the far north, whence Swan came carrying travelers’ tales, some religions supposedly pictured Hell as a cold place. My imagination, running with the terror that my brothers’ situation sparked, had no trouble picturing this cave as a suburb of Hell.
I rose carefully and moved away from Ochiba. Now the cave floor was almost perfectly level. My brothers were not crowded together. The rest seemed to be scattered along the next several hundred feet, not all immediately visible because of a turn in the cave. A few old cocoon men were interspersed with them. “I see the Lance!” I announced. Which was wonderful. Now we could split into two parties and have both retain their capacity for accessing the plain.
My voice echoed like there was a chorus of me all talking at the same time. Hitherto, Swan and I had tried to speak softly. The echoes had been little more than ghostly whispers although extremely busy even at that level.
“Keep it down,” One-Eye said. “What are you doing, Little Girl? You don’t have any idea what you’re dealing with here.” He had gotten past Swan somehow and was headed my way. He was awfully damned spry for a two-hundred-year-old stroke victim. This business had him truly excited.
That left me suspicious. But I had no time to try reasoning out what angle the man might have.
I looked into another pair of eyes, these belonging to a long, bony, pallid man who had to be the sorcerer Longshadow. Longshadow was a prisoner of the Company. He had been brought along because neither Croaker nor Lady trusted anyone else to guard him and he could not be exterminated because the health of the Shadowgate, insofar as they had known, was dependent upon his continued well-being. And well that they had been so distrustful. It would be a much different and more terrible world if the Shadowmaster had been left behind to tinker at whatever wickedness took his fancy. Soulcatcher’s evil was capricious and unfocused. Longshadow’s malice and insanity were deep and abiding.
That insanity stared out of his eyes right then. On my mental checklist I made a tick that meant this one would stay right where he was. Others might have plans for him but they were not in charge. If we could work out how to strengthen our world’s Shadowgate, maybe we could even execute him.
I continued moving, working my silent triage, constantly bemused because there were so many faces that I did not recognize. A lot of men who had enlisted while I was away from the center of the action. “Oh, darn!”
“What?” One-Eye was only a few steps behind me, gaining ground fast. His voice seemed to rattle as it echoed.
“It’s Wheezer. The stasis didn’t take for him.”
One-Eye grunted, evidently indifferent. Old Wheezer came from the same tribe One-Eye did, although Wheezer was more than a century younger than the wizard. There had never been any affection between them. “He had a better run than he deserved.” Wheezer had been old and dying of consumption when he joined the Company during its passage southward, decades ago. And he had continued to survive despite his infirmities and despite all the trials the Company had endured.
“Here’re Candles and Cletus. They’re gone, too. And a couple of Nyueng Bao and two Shadar I don’t recognize. Something happened here. This makes seven dead men, all in a clump.”
“Don’t move, Little Girl. Don’t touch anything before I have a chance to look it over.”
I froze. It was time to acknowledge his expertise.