Book 1 - Bleak Seasons Read Online Free Page A

condition.
    We have a bewildering maze dug out down where no one ought to
think to look. It gets a tad bigger whenever a sack of earth goes
to the wall or into one of our other projects. It is no cozy
warren, though. It takes willpower to go down into those dank, dark
places where the air hardly moves, candles never come wholly to
life, and there is at least a chance that any shadow may harbor a
screaming death.
    And me, I have a thing about being buried alive.
    It gets no easier with practice.
    Hagop and Otto, Goblin and One-Eye and I went through this
before, on the Plain of Fear, where for about five thousand years
we lived like badgers in the ground.
    “Cletus. Where’s Goblin?” Cletus is one of
three brothers who serve as our engineers and master
artillerymen.
    “Around the corner. Next cellar.”
    Cletus, Loftus and Longinus are geniuses. They figured out how
to bring fresh air down the chimneys of existing structures up top,
then into the deep tunnels, let it flow slowly through the complex,
then send it up other chimneys. Plain engineering, but it seemed
like sorcery to me. A flow of breathable air, though slow and never
pure, serves us well enough.
    It does nothing to lessen the damp and the smell.
    I found Goblin. He was holding a candle for Longinus while the
latter slapped wet mortar onto freshly scrubbed stonework about eye
level. “What’s the problem, Goblin?”
    “Rained like a bastard up there, eh?”
    “Gods swiped a river somewhere and dropped it here.
Why?”
    “We’ve got a thousand leaks down here.”
    “Big problem?”
    “Could be later on. There’s no drainage. We’re
as low as we can go unless the Twelve tunnel goes good.”
    “Sounds like an engineering problem to me.”
    “It is,” Longinus said, smoothing the mortar.
“And Clete did anticipate it. We’ve waterproofed from
the start. Trouble is, you can’t tell how you’re doing
until you get a really nasty rain. We’re lucky it
didn’t go on the way it does during the rainy season. Three
days of that, we might’ve gotten flooded out.”
    “Still sounds like an engineering problem. You can handle it,
right?”
    Longinus shrugged. “We’ll work on it. That’s
all we can do, Croaker.”
    Little dig there. Like telling me, let everybody do their own
worrying.
    “That’s why you wanted me?” It seemed a little
weak, even for Goblin.
    “No. Longo, you don’t hear anything.” The
toad-faced man made a complex gesture with three fingers of his
left hand as he said that. Some half-hinted glimmer trailed behind
his fingers momentarily. Longinus went back to work like he was
deaf.
    “It so important you need to cut him out?”
    “He talks. He don’t mean no harm but he can’t
help repeating everything he hears.”
    “And makes it better when he tells it. I know. All right.
Tell me.”
    “Something has happened with the Shadowmaster. He’s
changed. Me and One-Eye only decided for sure about an hour ago but
we think it’s been going on for a while. He’s just kept
us from seeing it.”
    “What?”
    Goblin leaned closer, as though Longinus might yet eavesdrop.
“He’s gotten well, Murgen. He’s just about back
to normal. He’s been getting his feet under him before he
comes down on us with them both at once. We also decided that he is
hiding the change more from his buddy Longshadow than he is from
us. We don’t scare him that much.”
    I stiffened, recalling strange behavior on the encircling plain,
going on right now. “Oh, shit!”
    “What?”
    “He’s going to come tonight. Real soon. They were
moving into position when I came down. I thought it was just the
usual . . . We’d better go full
alert.” I headed out of there with what energy I had,
announcing the alert wherever I saw anybody.
     
----

----

9
    Shadowspinner did not hurry. The Company took its positions on
the wall. The Taglian rabble we led got as ready as they ever get.
I sent warning to Mogaba and Speaker Ky Dam. Mogaba is a jerk and