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 Long shadow. 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 Shadow-master 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.

“I haven’t found them yet!” I snapped at Sahra and the Radisha. “I don’t want to go any farther if One-Eye can’t assure me that I’m not going to kill somebody just by being here.” Against all advice, those two had pushed as far forward as I would let them go. I could understand that they wanted to see their husbands and brothers and boyfriends, but they ought to have sense enough to restrain themselves until we knew what we could and could not do without risking harm to those very husbands and brothers and boyfriends.

Sahra gave me a sharp, hurt look.

“Sorry,” I said, insincerely. “Come on. Think. You can see that the stasis down here didn’t work for everyone. Swan. How far up this tunnel do we have to go?” I could see a scatter of eight recumbent forms between myself and the curve, none of whom were immediately recognizable as the Captain, Lady, Murgen, Thai Dei, Cordy Mather or

Blade. “From where we stand now, roughly eleven people still aren’t accounted for.”

“I don’t remember,” Swan grumped. Bass echoes chased one another around the cavern. They were worse with my higher pitched voice, though.

“Memory spell wearing off?”

“I don’t think so. This feels more like something I never knew. I’m still a whole lot confused about what went on down here.”

One big problem was that none of us really knew exactly how many Captured there were. Swan was the best witness because he had ridden with them, but he had not kept track, other than of key people. Murgen never had been any help because after he had become one of the Captured, he had apparently become unable to explore the immediate vicinity where he was confined.

“We need to get Murgen awake first thing. Nobody else will know all the names and faces.” It seemed probable that some of the people I did not recognize just were not part of the Company. “One-Eye. Figure out how to wake these people up. As soon as I find Murgen, I want to get him into talking condition. Can I go ahead?” Squabbling echoes reminded me to keep my voice down.

Crabbily, One-Eye responded, “Yes. Just don’t touch anybody. Or even anything that you don’t recognize. And stop trying to rush me.”

“Can you bring them out of stasis?”

“I don’t know yet, do I? I’ve been too damned busy answering dumb questions. Leave me alone long enough and I might figure it out, though.”

Tempers were getting short and manners were becoming frayed. I sighed, rubbed my forehead and temples because I had begun to develop a headache, listened to the sounds of more people descending the stair. “Willow, see if you can keep those fools out of here till One-Eye’s ready.” I looked ahead without eagerness. Not only did the cavern turn to the right, it steepened. The water-polished floor was covered with frost. The footing was going to be treacherous.