Port of Shadows_A Chronicle of the Black Company by Glen Cook

Author:Glen Cook [Cook, Glen]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Tom Doherty Associates
Published: 2018-09-11T00:00:00+00:00

19

Once Upon a Time: A Deeper Shade of Horror

The sisters Ardath and Sylith lived in constant terror. The Senjaks all did. The Dominator knew about Dorotea. The men responsible had paid. Gods, had they paid. None dared accuse the Dominator of lacking imagination when it came to discovering new ways to inflict pain. Others had paid as well, many of them innocent, all to assuage His rage. But that rage stormed on unabated. He wanted to know what had become of Credence. Although the Howler had been entirely forthcoming the Dominator was not convinced that the Senjaks were not up to something underhanded. Despite the evidence out there, where remnants of what had entangled the Howler had come close to doing the same to Him.

The physical evidence suggested the long-term residence of a true master sorcerer, a necromancer, whose sole interest in the rest of the world had been that it should leave him alone. But the Dominator judged the world by His own lights. A man with such skills, with such talent, with such power, must surely mean to use it to subdue the world and bend it to his will. Any such man must have been plotting against Him.

Nothing to suggest anything like that had been found. There were a couple of dead mastiffs, some unhappy livestock behind on their feed, and a coach that might have been the one the guards on the Jade Gate had seen the night that Dorotea disappeared. Inside the house there was only ragged furniture and, in a sizable room in back, a workshop that boasted most everything that a necromancer would need to pursue his craft.

The Dominator Himself had examined the place thoroughly. He had found nothing to alarm Him further. But still He had declared the site off-limits to everyone else, reasoning that He might have missed something that could be turned against Him.

The Senjaks were disappointed. Ardath and Sylith alike were convinced that, if Credence was still alive, she would have left some sign. And then there was the question of what the necromancer had done with Dorotea’s remains.

There was no longer any doubt that Dorotea had been dead when those morons had sent her down the waste chute.

A burial ground had been discovered in the woods behind the necromancer’s house. The remains of a dozen girls had been exhumed, suggesting that Dorotea was not the first discard fished from the waste canal—unless the necromancer had been using live girls in his experiments.

What the graves suggested about the mind of the necromancer appalled even the denizens of Grendirft.

None of the exhumed corpses belonged to Dorotea. None were fresh enough to have been her or Credence, so the necromancer must have taken them with him when he fled.

The fact that some mysterious nonentity had stolen a Taken’s carpet rattled the Dominator Himself and terrified nine of the Ten. A man would have to be insanely powerful if he could unattach and then control something as personal as a flying carpet.

The Howler told no one about the card deck that Credence had carried.

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