“There is something that fits the bill of particulars, Murgen. I’m not sure that when it’s awake it thinks of itself as Kina or as a goddess. It does want to bring on the Year of the Skulls. It does want to get free of its chains. But these are just emotions I have gained from it over the years. It is far too alien for me to know it well.”

“Like Old Father Tree?”

She had to think to remember the tree-god thing that had ruled the Plain of Fear and defied her when she was still the Lady.

“I never touched that mind.”

“Why would your sister pretend to be Kina?”

“I have never known why my sister does any of the things she does. She has never been rational. Two does not follow One in her scheme, nor does Three come before Four. She is capable of spending incredible energies and vast fortunes on the execution of a prank. She is capable of destroying cities without ever being able to explain why. You can know what she is doing but not why or you can know why she is doing something but not what. She was that way when she was three years old, before anyone knew she was cursed with the power, too.”

“You believe you’re cursed?”

She actually smiled. When she did her beauty shone through. “By an insane sister, for sure. I wish I had even the foggiest notion why she’s just out there, doing nothing but watching and constantly reminding us that she’s there.”

“Reminding us?”

“Don’t you get a little tired of those damned crows?”

“Yes, I do. I thought revenge was her thing.”

“If that was all she wanted she would have squashed me a long time ago.”

There was a stir behind me. Scores of eyes were staring at us as everyone in earshot tried to figure out what was going on. It had to be some secret if we were going to talk it over in a language nobody knew.

Willow Swan looked like his feelings were hurt.

“Excuse me, sir,” said a voice from behind me. “The Liberator’s compliments and would you be so good as to get your ass on about the job he gave you? He said to suggest that he wants the answer before sundown.”

That was not in a language no one else understood. It cheered Swan right up. Even Lady chuckled.

I do believe I blushed. “I’ll want to pursue this further,” I told Lady, who did not seem thrilled by the prospect. To the messenger, who happened to be the nephew of a prominent Taglian general, I said, “Just for that I think I’ll go do what the Old Man wants.”

It took me a long time to find Goblin but there was no hurry. The Shadowlanders up the pass were being particularly stubborn. Big Bucket was having to use a lot of firebombs to root them out.

I found it hard to believe. Goblin was on the other side of the Dandha Presh. His Shaded Road was an expedition that had pushed a commando force across the Shindai Kus. Croaker had talked about the possibility once, ages ago, before we ever even went after Dejagore, but I always thought it was completely impractical. So much so that the possibility had not occurred to me even when I had found Goblin on the shore of the Shindai Kus.

Goblin was still Goblin. The desert only baked it in. “I’m one step and ten seconds short of exhaustion,” he complained to the man nearest him, a Company brother named Bubba-do who was not too bright and who, I noted, kept Goblin on his left side, which was where he had the bad ear. “But I’m here. I’m in place. I’m on time. And nobody knows we’re here.”

Lights flared in the mountains above. Tiny balls of fire rose over the high Dandha Presh. Bubba-do said, “Looks like da Captain won his bet.”

“I’m worried. This damned thing’s been going too good. I’ve been fighting these people for years. I know how they think. I know Mogaba.” So did Bubba-do but that did not matter in Goblin’s view. “He ain’t going to let himself get whipped by Croaker. Whole point of him going over to the Shadowmaster was he wanted to prove he was a better soldier and general.”

Goblin went on and on. His men ignored him most of the time. After he had heard scouting reports about the surrounding terrain he allowed his men to build several small, carefully hidden fires. That side of the Dandha Presh was colder than the northern slope. It was impossible to manage without heat if you were not moving.

“I should’ve found a farm. Maybe a small town. Someplace where we could get inside.”

“That would mean killing a bunch of people so they couldn’t rat on us and that probably wouldn’t do any good anyway because somebody probably would’ve got away.”

It was almost dark. The excitement in the mountains was getting colorful. I began to wonder if Mogaba himself was not up there directing the resistance.

“You got company,” somebody said. Instantly everybody at Goblin’s fire found a chore that had to be handled right away somewhere else. Everyone but Goblin’s Nyueng Bao bodyguard, who was a man so unobtrusive I had yet to learn his full name. It was Thane, Trine, something like that. This man merely moved to a place more comfortable on a taller rock and laid his sword across his lap, ready for business.

The reason the others wanted to be elsewhere was evident a moment later. I had found one of my missing targets.

A huge, cruel-looking black panther stalked out of the darkness, settled near the fire. Goblin reached out and scratched her behind the ears.

What the hell? This particular panther had no love for him. Though her squabble with One-Eye was an order of magnitude bigger.

“So you decided to help out after all, eh?” Goblin said. “It never was that hard to get along.” Off he went on an odyssey of the imagination, describing in fantastic detail why she was a natural ally of the rest of us despite One-Eye’s having had to do in Shapeshifter. Shifter really had given him no choice, now, had he? Anyway, it was only a matter of time before they completed their research into the character of release spells. Last time he saw One-Eye they were just three terms and a postulate short of putting a wrap on it.

The wind had a real bite as I went looking for Croaker. There were bits of snow zinging around. Nobody had moved since this afternoon. Fireballs flickered across the sky up ahead. There were almost no fires. There was nothing to burn. Men huddled with one another for warmth. Hardly anyone lifted their eyes as I passed. I could have been the Shadowmaster himself and nobody would have cared. Had I been carrying hot food I would have been hailed as a messiah.

Croaker did not have a fire, either. But he had a girlfriend to keep him warm. Something nobody else had. The rat bastard.

“You want to go for a walk?”

Hell, no, he did not. Neither would you if you if you were bundled up in some blankets with a beautiful woman on a freezing night. “Use your imagination here, Murgen. Do I look like somebody who wants to be interrupted?”

“All right. Be that way. I’ve finally located the man you asked about. He seems to be where he’s supposed to be. But—”

“Then go keep an eye on him.”

“There’s a complication.”

“Keep an eye on him. He’s not likely to get into much before I can come check on him. Later.”

With him and Lady both scowling at me I decided I would take the hint and go away. Shaking my head. There are things you can accept intellectually but still not imagine. Those two in the throes of passion fell into the latter category.

If he was in no hurry I was not, either. I had a snack and a nap and a dream about Sarie before I got back to work. It was not a dream I wanted. It was Sarie looking aged and haggard and wearing white. But that was a better dream than the visit to ice hell that followed.

That one did not change much with time, nor did any more details develop. But I never got comfortable with it.

Goblin had all his illusions in place but he did not bother the first fugitives to hurry out of the Dandha Presh. Those would be the men least likely to be trouble in later times. He did have a few individuals captured so he could get a better idea of what had happened to the north. He told the panther, “A shithead like Longshadow don’t deserve followers like Mogaba.”