Book 3 - The White Rose Read Free Page B

from Oar. As time and resources permitted, he restored
the place. And like the sorcerer before him, he pursued the mission
that had brought him north.
    Ten, twelve, fourteen hours a day Corbie worked around town,
then went home and worked some more. People wondered when he
rested.
    If there was anything that detracted from Corbie, it was that he
refused to assume his role completely. Most scutboys had to endure
a lot of personal abuse. Corbie would not accept it. Victimize him
and his eyes went cold as winter steel. Only one man ever pressed
Corbie once he got that look. Corbie beat him with ruthless,
relentless efficiency.
    No one suspected him of leading a double life. Outside his home
he was Corbie the swamper, nothing more. He lived the role to his
heart. When he was home, in the more public hours, he was Corbie
the renovator, creating a new home from an old. Only in the wee
hours, while all but the night patrol slept, did he become Corbie
the man with a mission.
    Corbie the renovator found a treasure in a wall of the
wizard’s kitchen. He took it upstairs, where Corbie the
driven came up from the deeps.
    The scrap of paper bore a dozen words scribbled in a shaky hand.
A cipher key.
    That lean, dusky, long-unsmiling face shed its ice. Dark eyes
sparkled, Fingers turned up a lamp. Corbie sat, and for an hour
stared at nothing. Then, still smiling, he went downstairs and out
into the night. He raised a hand in gentle greeting whenever he
encountered the night patrol.
    He was known now. No one challenged his right to limp about and
watch the constellations wheel.
    He went home when his nerves settled. There would be no sleep
for him. He scattered papers, began to study, to decipher, to
translate, to write a story-letter that would not reach its
destination for years.
     
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Chapter Five:
THE PLAIN OF FEAR
    One-Eye stopped by to tell me Darling was about to interview
Corder and the messenger. “She’s looking peaked,
Croaker. You been watching her?”
    “I watch. I advise. She ignores. What can I do?”
    “We got twenty-some years till the comet shows. No point
her working herself to death, is there?”
    “Tell her
that. She just tells me this mess will be settled long before the
comet comes around again. That it’s a race against
time.”
    She believes that. But the rest of us cannot catch her fire.
Isolated in the Plain of Fear, cut off from the world, the struggle
with the Lady sometimes slips in importance. The Plain itself too
often preoccupies us.
    I caught myself outdistancing One-Eye. This premature burial has
not been good for him. Without his skills he has weakened
physically. He is beginning to show his age. I let him catch
up.
    “You and Goblin enjoy your adventure?”
    He could not choose between a smirk or scowl.
    “Got you again, eh?” Their battle has been on since
the dawn. One-Eye starts each skirmish. Goblin usually
finishes.
    He grumbled something.
    “What?”
    “Yo!” someone shouted. “Everybody up top!
Alert! Alert!”
    One-Eye spat. “Twice in one day? What the hell?”
    I knew what he meant. We have not had twenty alerts our whole
two years out here. Now two in one day? Improbable.
    I dashed back for my bow.
    This time we went out with less clatter. Elmo had made his
displeasure painfully apparent in a few private conversations.
    Sunlight again. Like a blow. The entrance to the Hole faces
westward. The sun was in our eyes when we emerged.
    “You damned fool!” Elmo was yelling. “What the
hell you doing?” A young soldier stood in the open, pointing.
I let my gaze follow.
    “Oh, damn,” I whispered. “Oh, double bloody
damn.”
    One-Eye saw it too. “Taken.”
    The airborne dot drifted higher, circling our hideout,
spiraling inward. It wobbled suddenly.
    “Yeah. Taken. Whisper or Journey?”
    “Good to see old friends,” Goblin said as he joined
us.
    We had not seen the Taken since reaching the Plain. Before that
they had been in our hair constantly, having pursued us