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

Corbie?”
    “I don’t know. Maybe because of its grand
statement.”
    “What?”
    Corbie swung an encompassing hand. “The vastness. The
ongoing rage. See how significant we are?” Brown water gnawed
at the hill, furious, fumbling forests of driftwood. Less turbulent
arms hugged the hill, probed the woods behind.
    Case nodded. “Like the feeling I get when I look at the
stars.”
    “Yes. Yes. But this is more personal. Closer to home. Not
so?”
    “I guess.” Case sounded baffled. Corbie smiled.
Legacy of a farm youth.
    “Let’s go back. It’s peaked. But I don’t
trust it with those clouds rolling in.”
    Rain did threaten. Were the river to rise much more, the hill
would become an island.
    Case helped Corbie cross the boggy parts and up to the crest of
the low rise which kept the flood from reaching cleared land. Much
of that was a lake now, shallow enough to be waded if some fool
dared. Under grey skies the Great Barrow stood out poorly,
reflecting off the water as a dark lump. Corbie shuddered.
“Case. He’s still there.”
    The youth leaned on his spear, interested only because Corbie
was interested. He wanted to get out of the drizzle.
    “The Dominator, lad. Whatever else did not escape.
Waiting. Filling with ever more hatred for the living.”
    Case looked at Corbie. The older man was taut with tension. He
seemed frightened.
    “If he gets loose, pity the world.”
    “But didn’t the Lady finish him in
Juniper?”
    “She stopped him. She didn’t destroy him. That may
not be possible . . . ”
    “Well, it must be. He has
to be vulnerable somehow. But if the White Rose couldn’t harm
him . . . ”
    “The Rose wasn’t so strong, Corbie. She
couldn’t even hurt the Taken. Or even their minions. All she
could do was bind and bury them. It took the Lady and the
Rebel . . . ”
    “The Rebel? I doubt that. She did it.” Corbie lunged
forward, forcing his leg. He marched along the edge of the lake.
His gaze remained fixed on the Great Barrow.
    Case feared Corbie was obsessed with the Barrowland. As a Guard,
he had to be concerned. Though the Lady had exterminated the
Resurrectionists in his grandfather’s time, still that mound
exerted its dark attraction. Monitor Sweet remained frightened
someone would revive that idiocy. He wanted to caution Corbie,
could think of no polite way to phrase himself.
    Wind stirred the lake. Ripples ran from the Barrow toward them.
Both shivered. “Wish this weather would break,” Corbie
muttered. “Time for tea?”
    “Yes.”
    The weather continued chill and wet. Summer came late. Autumn
arrived early. When the Great Tragic did at last recede, it left a
mud plain strewn with the wrecks of grand trees. Its channel had
shifted a half mile westward.
    The woodland tribes continued selling furs.
    Serendipity. Corbie was near done renovating. He was restoring a
closet. In removing a wooden clothes rod he fumbled. The rod
separated into parts when it hit the floor.
    He knelt. He stared. His heart hammered. A slim spindle of white
silk lay exposed . . .  Gently, gently, he put
the rod back together, carried it upstairs.
    Carefully, carefully, he removed the silk, unrolled it. His
stomach knotted.
    It was Bomanz’s chart of the Barrowland, complete with
notes about which Taken lay where, where fetishes were located and
why, the puissance of protective spells, and a scatter of known
resting places of minions of the Taken who had gone into the ground
with their captains. A cluttered chart indeed. Mostly annotated in
TelleKurre.
    Also noted were burial sites outside the Barrowland proper. Most
of the ordinary fallen had gone into mass graves.
    The battle fired Corbie’s imagination. For a moment he saw
the Dominator’s forces standing firm, dying to the last man.
He saw wave after wave of the White Rose horde give themselves up
to contain the shadow within the trap. Overhead, the Great Comet
seared the sky, a vast flaming scimitar.
    He could only imagine,