“It’s too much to grasp. It’ll take a long time to digest. Kina is real, though?”

“Absolutely. Buried right down here under me somewhere. I’ve never been tempted to go look for her. I wouldn’t want to accidentally cut her loose. I don’t know how I could manage that but I definitely don’t want to find out the hard way.”

“What about Rhaydreynak and the Books of the Dead? Where do they fit?” Rhaydreynak’s war on the cult of Kina antedated the appearance of the Free Companies by several centuries supposedly, yet there were scary similarities suggesting shared origins.

“The rise of the Free Companies is actually one of the least well known despite its being closest in time. There were many Companies over several hundred years. They came from several different worlds and went off into several more, representing almost as many different sects of Kina worshippers. Most seem to have been sent out to explore, not conquer or to serve as mercenaries or even to bring on the Year of the Skulls. What their true mission seems to have been was to determine which world should be awarded the honor of being sacrificed in order to bring on the Year of the Skulls.”

“Then a bunch of worlds decided to gang up on ours?”

“Kina spanned many worlds. Her deviltry was almost universal, apparently.”

“And we lost the toss and got to bury her in ours?”

“You’re not in our world anymore, Sleepy. This’s the in-between. Where you are depends on what gate you walk out. And these days you have only one choice. Its Shadowgate lies straight ahead, on the far side of the plain. It’s as if the plain itself is closing down the alternate ways.”

“I don’t get it. Why would it do that? And how?”

“Sometimes its seems like the plain itself is alive, Sleepy. Or at least that it can think.”

“Is it where we came from? Is it where the Captain spent most of his life trying to go?”

“No. The Company can’t go back to Khatovar. Croaker will never reach the promised land. That Shadowgate is dead. The world where you’re headed is very much like our own. To other worlds it’s known by a name that translates into Taglian somewhat vaguely as The Land of Unknown Shadows.”

Without thinking I responded, “All Evil Dies There an Endless Death.”

“What?” Startled. “Yes. How did you know? They were the people who committed the murders that produced the shadows.”

“I heard it somewhere. From a Nyueng Bao.”

“Yes. Nyueng Bao De Duang. In current Nyueng Bao usage that means something like ’The Chosen Children’ colloquially and nothing whatsoever that’s sensible literally. In the days when their forebears were sent out from The Land of Unknown Shadows it meant, roughly, ’the Children of the Dead.’”

“You’ve been busy,” I observed.

“Hardly, considering how long I’ve been trapped here.

Try it for a decade, Sleepy. You won’t have to put up with any of the distractions you complain about when you aren’t getting everything you want to do done.”

“No kidding? Seems to me I’m all of a sudden having to work even while I’m sleeping.”

“Not for long. Whoever has control of that mist-making thing is trying to get me to answer him. Why don’t you sneak around there and smash that sucker so I don’t have to get dragged into it every time somebody wants my view on how to crack a walnut or whatever else the crisis of the moment happens to be.”

“Not hardly, former boss. I’m carrying a whole bag of nuts myself.”

“You would” Murgen departed as though yanked away.

I could have sworn I heard the laughter of an eavesdropping white crow.

“How come you’re so crabby?” Willow Swan demanded when I snapped at him for no good reason. “Rag time again already?”

I blushed. Me, after twenty years among the crudest men on two hooves. “No, jerk. I didn’t sleep very well last night.”

“What?”

It exploded out of him like the shriek of a stomped rat.

“I didn’t sleep well last night.”

“Oh, yeah. Not our sweet little Sleepy. Guys, anybody, Ro, River, whoever, you want to step up and remind us about the Roar in the Rain last night?”

Riverwalker told me, “Boss, your snoring made more noise than a tiger in heat. We had people get up and move back up the road toward home to get away from the racket. There were people wanted to strangle you or at least put your head in a sack. I bet if anybody else knew what the hell we were doing and where we were going, you’d be on that travois with General Sindawe.”

“But I’m such a sweet, delicate flower. I couldn’t possibly snore.” I had been accused of the crime before but only jokingly, never with such passion.

River snorted. “Swan decided not to marry you.”

“I’m stricken. I’ll see if One-Eye doesn’t have a cure.”

“A cure? The man can’t even take care of himself.”

I scrounged up something to eat. It was barely worth the effort and definitely not filling. We would be on short rations for a long time. Before I finished what morning preparations were possible for me, the forward elements were already moving. The general mood was more relaxed. We had survived the night. And yesterday we had shoved it to the Protector real good.

The relaxation ended when we found Bucket’s remains.

Big Bucket, real name Cato Dahlia, once a thief, once an officer of the Black Company, was almost a father to me. He never said and I never asked but I suspect he knew I was female all along. He was very unpleasant to some of my male relatives, way back when.

You did not want to be the object when Bucket got angry.

I managed not to break down. I had had a long time to get used to the idea that he was gone, though there was always some small, irrational hope that Murgen was wrong, that death had overlooked him and he was buried with the Captured.

The men put Bucket on the travois with Sindawe without having to be told.

I tagged along and became entranced by one of those unaccountably irrelevant trains of thought that often take shape at such times.

We had left a truly nasty mess where we had spent the night, particularly in the line of animal waste. Likely the Captured had done the same during their passage along this same road. However, other than the odd corpse, there was no sign that they had passed through. There were no dung piles now, no gnawed, discarded bones, no vegetable waste, no ashes from charcoal braziers, nothing. Only human bodies lasted and they became thoroughly desiccated.

I would have to take it up with Murgen. Meantime, it was a mental exercise that would keep me from dwelling upon Bucket.

We trudged on southward. The rain came and went, never more than a drizzle, though sometimes the wind brought it stinging in from a sharp angle. I shivered a lot and worried about it getting cold enough to sleet or snow. No other evil found us. Eventually I spied the vague silhouette of our initial destination, that mysterious central fortress.

The wind began to blow steadily.

Some of the men complained about the cold. Some complained about the wet. Quite a few complained about the menu, and a handful insisted on complaining about all the complaining, I sensed few positive feelings concerning what we were doing.

I felt very much alone, almost abandoned, the whole day long despite well-meant efforts from Swan, Sahra and quite a few others. Only Uncle Doj did not bother because even at this late date he remained piqued because I would not enlist as his apprentice. He continued his emotional machinations. Several times I caught myself retreating into my away place and had to remind me that I did not need to go there now. None of those people could hurt me anymore. Not if I did not let them. I controlled their reality. They survived only in my memory...

Even that is immortality of a sort.