I hurried. Enemy patrols would be out looking for important bodies come first light.
What could I do now, besides survive? I was the last of the Black Company. There was nothing left... . Something came into me like a lost memory resurfacing. I could turn back time. I could become what I had been.
Trying not to think did not help. I remembered. And the more I remembered the more angry I became. Anger shaped me till all my thoughts were of revenge.
As I started into the hills I surrendered. Those monsters who had raped my dreams had written their own decrees of doom. I would do whatever it took to requite them.
Chapter Six
Longshadow paced a room ablaze with light so brilliant he seemed a dark spirit trapped in the mouth of the sun. He clung to that one crystal walled, mirrored chamber where no shadow ever formed unless called forth by dire exigency. His fear of shadows was pathological.
The chamber was the highest in the tallest tower of the fortress Overlook, south of Shadowcatch, a city on the southern edge of the world. South of Overlook lay a plateau of glittering stone where isolated pillars stood like forgotten supports for the sky. Though construction had been underway for seventeen years, Overlook was incomplete. If Longshadow did finish it, no force material or supernatural would be able to penetrate it.
Strange, deadly, terrifying things hungered for him, lusted for freedom from the plain of glittering stone. They were shadow things that could catch up with a man as suddenly as death if he didn't cling to the light.
Longshadow's sorcery had shown him the battle at Stormgard, four hundred miles north of Shadowcatch. He was pleased. His rivals Moonshadow and Stormshadow had perished. Shadowspinner had been injured. A touch here, a touch there, subtly, would keep Shadowspinner weak.