Hagop was riding point, being a superb scout. He threw up a hand. I joined him. He indicated droppings in the trail. "We're following somebody. Not far behind." He swung down, poked the droppings with a stick, duck walked up the trail a way. "He was riding something big. Mule or plowhorse."

"Asa!"

"Eh?" the little man squeaked.

"What's up ahead? Where is this guy headed?"

"Nothing's up there. That I know of. Maybe it's a hunter. They sell a lot of game in the markets."

"Maybe."

"Sure," One-Eye said, sarcastic, playing with his violet snake.

"How about you put a little silence on the situation, One-Eye? No! I mean so n.o.body can hear us coming. Asa. How far to go?"

"Couple miles, anyway. Why don't you guys let me head back now? I can still get to town before dark."

"Nope. You go where we go." I glanced at One-Eye. He was doing as I had requested. We would be able to hear one another talk. That was all. "Saddle up, Hagop. He's only one guy."

"But which guy, eh, Croaker? Suppose it's one of them creepy things? I mean, if that place in Juniper had a whole battalion that came out of nowhere, why shouldn't this place have some?"

Asa made sounds that indicated he had been having similar thoughts. Which explained why he was anxious to get back to town.

"You see anything when you were there, Asa?"

"No. But I seen where the gra.s.s was trampled like something was coming and going."

"You pay attention when we get there, One-Eye. I don't want no surprises."

Twenty minutes later Asa told me, "Almost there. Maybe two hundred yards up the creek. Can I stay here?"

"Quit asking stupid questions." I glanced at Hagop, who pointed out tracks. Somebody was ahead of us still. "Dismount. And stow the chatter. Finger talk from here on in. You, Asa. don't open your mouth for nothing. Understand?"

We dismounted, drew our weapons, went forward under cover of One-Eye's spell. Hagop and I reached the clearing first. I grinned, waved One-Eye forward, pointed. He grinned too.

I waited a couple of minutes, for the right time, then strode out, stepped up behind the man, and grabbed his shoulder. "Marron Shed."

He shrieked and tried to pull a knife, tried to run at the same time. Kingpin and Hagop headed him off and herded him back. By that time I was kneeling where he had knelt, examining the scatter of bones.

Chapter Forty-Four:.

MEADENVIL: THE CLEARING.

I looked up at Shed. He looked resigned. "Caught up faster than you expected, eh?"

He babbled. I could make little sense of what he said because he was talking about several things at once. Raven. Black castle creatures. His chance to make a new life. What-not.

"Calm down and be quiet. Shed. We're on your side." I explained the situation, telling him we had four days to find Darling. He found it difficult to believe that the girl who had worked in the Iron Lily could be the Rebel's White Rose. I did not argue, just presented the facts. "Four days. Shed. Then the Lady and Taken could be here. And I guarantee you she'll be looking for you. too. By now they know we faked your death. By now they've probably questioned enough people to have an idea what was going on. We're fighting for our lives, Shed." I looked at the big black lump and said to no one in particular. "And that thing don't help one d.a.m.ned bit."

I looked at the bones again. "Hagop, see what you can make of this. One-Eye, you and Asa go over exactly what he saw that day. Walk through it. Kingpin, you play Raven for them. Shed, come here with me."

I was pleased. Both Asa and Shed did as they were told. Shed, though shaken by our return to the stage of his life, did not seem likely to panic. I watched him as Hagop examined the ground inch by inch. Shed seemed to have grown, to have found something in himself that had not had a chance in the sterile soil of Juniper.

He whispered, "Look, Croaker. I don't know about that stuff about the Lady coming and how you got to find Darling. I don't much care." He indicated the black lump. "What're you going to do about that?"

"Good question." He did not have to explain what it meant. It meant the Dominator had not endured final defeat in Juniper. He had hedged his bet beforehand. He had another gateway growing here, and growing fast. Asa was right to be afraid of castle creatures. The Dominator knew he had to hurry-though I doubted he had expected to be found out so soon. "There isn't much we can do, when you get down to it."

"You got to do something. Look, I know. I dealt with those things. What they did to me and Raven and Juniper...h.e.l.l, Croaker, you can't let that happen again here."

"I didn't say I didn't want to do something. I said I can't. You don't ask a man with a penknife to chop down a forest and build a city. He doesn't have the tools."

"Who does?"

"The Lady."

"Then..."

"I have my limits, friend. I'm not going to get myself killed for Meadenvil. I'm not going to get my outfit scrubbed for people I don't know. Maybe we owe a moral debt. But I don't think it's that big."

He grunted, understanding without accepting. I was surprised. Without his having said as much, I sensed that he had launched a crusade. A grand villain trying to buy redemption. I did not begrudge him in the least. But he could do it without the Company and me.

I watched One-Eye and Asa walk Kingpin through everything Raven had done the day he died. From where I sat I could see no flaw in Asa's story. I hoped One-Eye had a better view. He, if anyone, could find the angle. He was as good at stage magic as at true wizardry.

I recalled that Raven had been pretty good with tricks. His biggie had been making knives appear out of thin air. But he had had other tricks with which he had entertained Darling.

Hagop said, "Look here, Croaker."

I looked. I did not see anything abnormal. "What?"

"Going through the gra.s.s toward the lump. It's almost gone now, but it's there. Like a trail." He held blades of gra.s.s parted.

It took me a while to see it. Just the faintest hint of a sheen, like an old snail track. A closer scrutiny showed that it should have started roughly where the corpse's heart would have lain. It took a little work to figure, because scavengers had torn the remains.

I examined a fleshless hand. Rings remained on the fingers. Various metal accoutrements and several knives also lay around.

One-Eye worked Kingpin over to the bones. "Well?" I asked.

"It's possible. With a little misdirection and stage magic. I couldn't tell you how he did it. If he did."

"We got a body," I said, indicating the bones.

"That's him," Asa insisted. "Look. He's still wearing his rings. And that's his belt buckle and sword and knives." But a shadow of doubt lingered in his voice. He was coming around to my way.

And I still wondered why the nice new ship had not been claimed.

"Hagop. Hunt around for signs somebody went off in another direction. Asa. You said you lit out as soon as you saw what was happening?"

"Yeah."

"So. Let's quit worrying about that and try to figure what happened here. Just to look at it, this dead man had something that became that." I indicated the lump. I was surprised I had so little trouble ignoring it. I guess you can get used to anything. I'd paraded around the big one in Juniper till I'd lost that cold dread that had moved me for a while. I mean, if men can get used to slaughterhouses, or my business-soldier or surgeon-they can get used to anything.

"Asa, you hung around with Raven. Shed, he lived at your place for a couple years, and you were his partner. What did he bring from Juniper that could have come to life and become that?"

They shook their heads and stared at the bones. I told them, "Think harder. Shed, it had to be something he had when you knew him. He stopped going up the hill a long time before he headed south."

A minute or two pa.s.sed. Hagop had begun working his way along the edge of the clearing. I had little hope he would find traces this long after the fact. I was no woodsman, but I knew Raven.

Asa suddenly gasped.

"What?" I snapped.

"Everything is here. You know, all the metal. Even his b.u.t.tons and stuff. But one thing."

"Well?"

"This necklace he wore. I only seen it a couple times...What's the matter, Shed?"

I turned. Shed was gripping his chest over his heart. His face was marble white. He gobbled for words that would not come. He started trying to rip his shirt.

I thought he was having an attack. But as I reached him, to help, he opened his shirt and grabbed something he was wearing around his neck. Something on a chain. He tried to get it off by main force. The chain would not break.

I forced him to take it off over his head, pried it out of stiff fingers, held it out to Asa.

Asa looked a little pale. "Yeah. That's it."

"Silver," One-Eye said, and looked at Hagop meaningfully.

He would think that way. And he might be right. "Hagop! Come here."

One-Eye took the thing, held it to the light. "Some craftsmanship," he mused...Then flung it down and dived like a frog off his lily pad. As he arced through the air, he barked like a jackal.

Light flashed. I whirled. Two castle creatures stood at the side of the black lump, frozen in midstep, in the act of rushing us. Shed cursed. Asa shrieked. Kingpin zipped past me and drove his blade deep into a chest. I did the same, so rattled I did not recall the difficulty I'd had during our previous encounter.

We both hit the same one. We both yanked our weapons free. "The neck," I gasped. "Go for the vein in the neck."

One-Eye was up again, ready for action. He told me later he had glimpsed motion in the corner of his eye, jumped just in time to evade something thrown. They had known who to take first. Who was most potent.

Hagop came up from behind as the things started moving, added his blade to the contest. As did Shed, to my surprise. He jumped in with a knife about a foot long, got low, went for a hamstring.

It was brief. One-Eye had given us the moment we needed. They were stubborn about it, but they died. The last to go looked up at Shed, smiled, and said, "Marron Shed. You will be remembered." Shed started shaking.

Asa said, "He knew you, Shed."

"He's the one I delivered bodies to. Every time but one."

"Wait a minute," I countered. "Only one creature got away at Juniper. Don't seem likely it would be the one who knew you..." I stopped. I had noticed something disturbing. The two creatures were identical. Even to a scar across the chest when I peeled back their dark clothing. The creature the Lieutenant and I had hauled down the hill, after having slain it before the castle gate, had had such a scar.

While everyone else was suffering post-combat shakes, One-Eye asked Hagop, "You see anything silver around Old Bones? When you were checking first?"

"Uh..."

One-Eye held up Shed's necklace. "It might have looked something like this. It was what killed him."

Hagop gulped and dug into a pocket. He handed over a necklace identical to Shed's, except that the serpents had no eyes.

"Yeah," One-Eye said, and again held Shed's necklace to the light. "Yeah. The eyes it was. When the time was right. Time and place."

I was more interested in what else might come out of the black lump. I pulled Hagop around the side, found the entrance. It looked like the entrance to a mud hut. I supposed it wouldn't become a real gate till the place grew up. I indicated the tracks. "What do they tell you?"

"They tell me it's busy and we ought to get out of here. There's more of them."

"Yeah."

We rejoined the others. One-Eye was wrapping Shed's necklace in a piece of cloth. "We get back to town, I'm sealing this in something made of steel and sinking it in the harbor."

"Destroy it, One-Eye. Evil always finds its way back. The Dominator is a perfect example."

"Yeah. All right. If I can."

Elmo's rush into the black castle came to mind while I was getting everybody organized to get out of there. I had changed my mind about overnighting. We could get most of the way back before nightfall. Meadenvil, like Juniper, had neither walls nor gates. We would not be locked outside.

I let Elmo lie in the back of my mind till the thought ripened. When it did, I was aghast.

A tree ensures reproduction by shedding a million seeds. One certainly will survive, and a new tree will grow. I pictured a horde of fighters bursting into the guts of the black castle and finding silver amulets everywhere. I pictured them filling their pockets.

Had to be. That place was doomed. The Dominator would have known that even before the Lady.

My respect for the old devil rose. Crafty b.a.s.t.a.r.d.

It was not till we were back on the Shaker Road that I thought to ask Hagop if he had seen any evidence that anyone had left the clearing by another route.

"Nope," he said. "But that don't mean anything."

"Let's not spend so much time yakking," One-Eye said. "Shed, can't you make that d.a.m.ned mule go any faster?"

He was scared. And if he was, I was more so.

Chapter Forty-Five:.