Book 2 - Shadows Linger by Glen Cook Read Free Book Online

mood. He even nodded to One-Eye.
    So. It was over. The stopper could be put into the bottle.
One-Eye just had to say the right thing.
    To my amazement, he even apologized. By sign, Silent suggested
we get out and let them conclude their peace in private. Each had
an overabundance of pride.
    We stepped outside. As we often did when no one could intercept
our signs, we discussed old times. He, too, was privy to the secret
for which the Lady would obliterate nations.
    Half a dozen others suspected once, and had forgotten. We knew,
and would never forget. Those others, if put to the question, would
leave the Lady with serious doubts.
    We two, never. We knew the identity of the Lady’s most
potent enemy—and for six years we had done nothing to apprise her
of the fact that that enemy even existed as more than a Rebel
fantasy.
    The Rebel tends to a streak of superstition. He loves prophets
and prophecies and grand, dramatic foretellings of victories to
come. It was pursuit of a prophecy which led him into the trap at
Charm, nearly causing his extinction. He regained his balance
afterward by convincing himself that he was the victim of false
prophets and prophecies, laid upon him by villains trickier than
he. In that conviction he could go on, and believe more impossible
things.
    The funny thing was, he lied to himself with the truth. I was,
perhaps, the only person outside the Lady’s inner circle who
knew he had been guided into the jaws of death. Only, the enemy who
had done the guiding was not the Lady, as he believed.
    That enemy was an evil greater still, the Dominator, the
Lady’s one-time spouse, whom she had betrayed and left buried
but alive in a grave in the Great Forest north of a far city called
Oar. From that grave he had reached out, subtly, and twisted the
minds of men high in Rebel circles, bending them to his will,
hoping to use them to drag the Lady down and bring about his own
resurrection. He failed, though he had help from several of the
original Taken in his scheme.
    If he knew of my existence, I must be high on his list. He lay
up there still, scheming, maybe hating me, for I helped betray the
Taken helping him . . . Scary, that. The Lady
was medicine bad enough. The Dominator, though, was the body of
which her evil was but a shadow. Or so the legend goes. I sometimes
wonder why, if that is true, she walks the earth and he lies
restless in the grave.
    I have done a good deal of research since discovering the power
of the thing in the north, probing little-known histories. Scaring
myself each time. The Domination, an era when the Dominator
actually ruled, smelled like an era of hell on earth. It seemed a
miracle that the White Rose had put him down. A pity she could not
have destroyed him. And all his minions, including the Lady. The
world would not be in the straits it is today. I wonder when the
honeymoon will end. The Lady hasn’t been that terrible. When
will she relax, and give the darkness within her free rein,
reviving the terror of the past?
    I also wonder about the villainies attributed to the Domination.
History, inevitably, is recorded by self-serving victors.
    A scream came from Goblin’s quarters. Silent and I stared
at one another a moment, then rushed inside.
    I honestly expected one of them to be bleeding his life out on
the floor. I did not expect to find Goblin having a fit while
One-Eye desperately strove to keep him from hurting himself.
“Somebody made contact,” One-Eye gasped. “Help
me. It’s strong.”
    I gaped. Contact. We hadn’t had a direct communication
since the desperately swift campaigns when the Rebel was closing in
on Charm, years ago. Since then, the Lady and Taken have been
content to communicate through messengers.
    The fit lasted only seconds. That was customary. Then Goblin
relaxed, whimpering. It would be several minutes before he
recovered enough to relay the message. We three looked at one
another with card-playing faces, frightened inside. I