Shadows Linger

I gri

“I don’t know.”

“Asa...”

“Honest. I only saw it a couple times on the ship. I never thought anything about it.”

“What are you getting at, Croaker?” the Captain asked.

“I have a theory. Just based on what I know about Raven and Asa.”

Everyone frowned.

“Generally, what we know about Asa suggests he’s a character Raven wouldn’t take up with on a bet. He’s chicken. Unreliable. Too talkative. But Raven did take up with him. Took him south and made him part of the team. Why? Maybe that don’t bother you guys, but it does me.”

“I don’t follow you,” the Captain said. “Suppose Raven wanted to disappear so people wouldn’t even bother looking for him? He tried to vanish once, by coming to Juniper. But we turned up. Looking for him, he thought. So what next? How about he dies? In front of a witness. People don’t hunt for dead men.”

Elmo interrupted. “You saying he staged his death and used Asa to report it so nobody would come looking?” “I’m saying we ought to consider the possibility.” The Captain’s sole response was a thoughtful, “Uhm.” Goblin said, “But Asa did see him die.” “Maybe. And maybe he only thinks he did.” We all looked at Asa. He cowered. The Captain said, “Take him through his story again, One-Eye. Step-by-step.” For two hours One-Eye dragged the little man through again and again. And we could not spot one flaw. Asa insisted he had seen Raven die, devoured from within by something snake-like. And the more my theory sprung leaks, the more I was sure it was valid.

“My case depends on Raven’s character,” I insisted, when everybody ganged up on me. “There’s the crate, and there’s Darling. Her and a damned expensive ship that he, for godsakes, had built. He left a trail going out of here, and he knew it. Why sail a few hundred miles and tie up to a dock when somebody is going to come looking? Why leave Shed alive behind you, to tell about you being in on the raid on the Catacombs? And there’s no way in hell he’d leave Darling twisting in the wind. Not for a minute. He would have had arrangements made for her. You know that.” My arguments were begi

“What is this with the crate?” One-Eye demanded. I ignored him.

“I think you have too much imagination, Croaker,” the Captain said. “But, on the other hand, Raven is crafty enough to pull something like that. Soon as I can spring you, figure on going down to check.”

“If Raven’s crafty enough, how about the Taken being villainous enough to try something against us?”

“We’ll cross that bridge when we come to it.” He faced One-Eye. “I want you and Goblin to save the games. Understand? Too much clowning around and the Taken will get curious. Croaker. Hang on to this Asa character. You’ll want him to show you where Raven died. I’m heading back to the outfit. Elmo. Come ride with me part way.”

So. A little private business. Bet it had to do with my suspicions about the Taken. After a while you get so used to some people you can almost read their minds.

Chapter Thirty-Three

Juniper

The encounter

Things changed after the Captain’s visit. The men became more alert. Elmo’s influence waxed while mine waned. A less wishy-washy, more inflexible tone characterized the Company deputation. Every man became ready to move at an instant’s notice.

Communications improved dramatically while time available for sleep declined painfully. None of us were ever out of touch more than two hours. And Elmo found excuses to get everyone but himself out of Duretile, into places where the Taken would have trouble finding them. Asa became my ward out on the black castle slope.

Tension mounted. I felt like one of a flock of chickens poised to scatter the moment a fox landed among us. I tried to bleed off my shakiness by updating the A

When the tension became too much for me, I walked uphill to stare at the black castle.

It was an intentional risk-taking, like that of a child who crawls out a tree branch overhanging a deadly fall. The closer I approached the castle, the more narrow my concentration. At two hundred yards all other cares vanished. I felt the dread of that place down to my ankle bones and the shallows of my soul. At two hundred yards I felt what it meant to have the shadow of the Dominator overhanging the world. I felt what the Lady felt when she considered her husband’s potential resurrection. Every emotion be- came edged with a hint of despair.    In a way, the black castle was more than a gateway through which the world’s great old evil might reappear. It was a concretization of metaphorical concepts, and a living symbol. It did things a great cathedral does. Like a cathedral,it was far more than an edifice.

I could stare at its obsidian walls and grotesque decoration, recall Shed’s stories, and never avoid dipping into the cesspool of my own soul, never avoid searching myself for the essential decency shelved through most of my adult life. That castle was, if you like, a moral landmark. If you had a brain. If you had any sensitivity at all.    

There were times when One-Eye, Goblin, Elmo or another of the men accompanied me. Not one of them went away untouched. They could stand there with me, talking trivialities about its construction or, weightily, about its significance in the Company’s future, and all the while something would be happening inside.

I do not believe in evil absolute. I have recounted that philosophy in specific elsewhere in the A

The world knows where it stands with the Lady. It is the Rebel whose ideals and morals conflict with fact, becoming as changeable as the weather and as flexible as a snake.

But I digress. The black castle has that effect. Makes you amble off into all the byways and cul-de-sacs and false trails you have laid down during your life. It makes you reassess. Makes you want to take a stand somewhere, even if on the black side. Leaves you impatient with your own malleable morality.

I suspect that is why Juniper decided to pretend the place did not exist. It is an absolute demanding absolutes in a world with a preference for relatives.

Darling was in my thoughts often while I stood below those black, glossy walls, for she was the castle’s antipode when I was up there. The white pole, and absolute in opposition to what the black castle symbolized. I had not been much in her presence since realizing what she was, but I could recall being morally u

From what Shed said, she did not reek the way the castle did. His main interest in her had been hustling her upstairs. And Raven had not been driven into puritanical cha

Possibly there was a message there. An observation upon means to ends. Here was Raven who had acted with the pragmatic amorality of a prince of Hell, all so he could save the child who represented the best hope of the world against the Lady and the Dominator.