Book 3 - The White Rose by Glen Cook Read Free Book Online

all summer. Won’t
have it, you hear?”
    “I said I’d drop it.”
     
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Chapter Eight:
THE BARROWLAND
    Corbie came and went at will around the Guard compound. The
walls inside the headquarters building boasted several dozen old
paintings of the Barrowland. He studied those often while he
cleaned, shivering. His reaction was not unique. The
Dominator’s attempt to escape through Juniper had rocked the
Lady’s empire. Stories of his cruelties had fed upon
themselves and grown fat in the centuries since the White Rose laid
him down.
    The Barrowland remained quiet. Those who watched saw nothing
untoward. Morale rose. The old evil had shot its bolt.
    But it waited.
    It would wait throughout eternity if need be. It could not die.
Its apparent last hope was no hope. The Lady was immortal, too. She
would allow nothing to open her husband’s grave.
    The paintings recorded progressive decay. The latest dated from
shortly after the Lady’s resurrection. Even then the
Barrowland had been much more whole.
    Sometimes Corbie went to the edge of town, stared at the Great
Barrow, shook his head.
    Once there had been amulets which permitted Guards safely within
the spells making the Barrowland lethal, to allow for upkeep. But
those had disappeared. The Guard could but watch and wait now.
    Time ambled. Slow and grey and limping, Corbie became a town
fixture. He spoke seldom, but occasionally enlivened the lie
sessions at Blue Willy with a wooly anecdote from the Forsberg
campaigns. The fire blazed in his eyes then. No one doubted he had
been there, even if he saw those days a little walleyed.
    He made no true friends. Rumor said he did share the occasional
private chess game with the Monitor, Colonel Sweet, for whom he had
done some special small services. And of course, there was the
recruit Case, who devoured his tales and accompanied him on his
hobbling walks. Rumor said Corbie could read. Case hoped to
learn.
    No one ever visited the second floor of Corbie’s home.
There, in the heart of the night, he slowly unravelled the
treacherous mare’s nest of a tale that time and dishonesty
had distorted out of any parallel with truth.
    Only parts were encrypted. Most was hastily scribbled in
TelleKurre, the principal language of the Domination era. But
scattered passages were in UchiTelle, a TelleKurre regional
vulgate. Times were, when battling those passages, Corbie smiled
grimly. He might be the only man alive able to puzzle through those
sometimes fragmentary sentences. “Benefit of a classical
education,” he would murmur with a certain sarcasm. Then he
would become reflective, introspective. He would take one of his
late night walks to shake revenant memory. One’s own
yesterday is a ghost that will not be laid. Death is the only
exorcism.
    He saw himself as a craftsman, did Corbie. A smith. An armorer
cautiously forging a lethal sword. Like his predecessor in that
house, he had dedicated his life to the search for a fragment of
knowledge.
    The winter was astonishing. The first snows came early, after an
early and unusually damp autumn. It snowed often and heavily.
Spring came late.
    In the forests north of the Barrowland, where only scattered
clans dwelt, life was harsh. Tribesmen appeared bearing furs to
trade for food. Factors for the furriers of Oar were ecstatic.
    Old folks called the winter a harbinger of worse to come. But
old folks always see today’s weather as more harsh than that
of yore. Or milder. Never, never the same.
    Spring sprung. A swift thaw set the creeks and rivers raging.
The Great Tragic, which looped within three miles of the
Barrowland, spread miles beyond its banks. It abducted tens and
hundreds of thousands of trees. The flood was so spectacular that
scores from town wandered out to watch it from a hilltop.
    For most, the novelty faded. But Corbie limped out any day Case
could accompany him. Case was yet possessed of dreams. Corbie
indulged him.
    “Why so interested in the river,