Free Book 2 - Shadows Linger by Glen Cook Page A

went directly to the Enclosure. Shed stalked along behind,
keeping his head down, confident Asa would not suspect him even if
he looked back. The streets were crowded.
    Asa left the wagon in a public grove across a lane running
alongside the wall which girdled the Enclosure. It was one of many
similar groves where Juniper’s citizenry gathered for the
Spring and Autumn Rites for the Dead. The wagon could not be seen
from the lane.
    Shed squatted in shadow and bush and watched Asa dash to the
Enclosure wall. Somebody ought to clear that brush away, Shed
thought. It made the wall look tacky. For that matter, the wall
needed repairing. Shed crossed and found a gap through which a man
could duck-walk. He crept through. Asa was crossing an open meadow,
hurrying uphill toward a stand of pines.
    The inner face of the wall was brush-masked, too. Scores of
bundles of wood lay among the bushes. Asa had more industry than
Shed had suspected. Hanging around Krage’s gang had changed
him. They had him scared for sure.
    Asa entered the pines. Shed puffed after him. Ahead, Asa sounded
like a cow pushing through the underbrush.
    The whole Enclosure was tacky. In Shed’s boyhood it had
been park-like, a fit waiting place for those who had gone before.
Now it had the threadbare look that characterized the rest of
Juniper.
    Shed crept toward hammering racket. What was Asa doing, making
so much noise?
    He was cutting wood from a fallen tree, stacking the pieces in
neat bundles. Shed could not picture the little man orderly,
either. What a difference terror made. An hour later Shed was ready
to give up. He was cold and hungry and stiff. He had wasted half a
day. Asa was doing nothing remarkable. But he persevered. He had a
time investment to recoup. And an irritable Raven awaiting his
report.
    Asa worked hard. When not chopping, he hustled bundles down to
his wagon. Shed was impressed.
    He stayed, watched, and told himself he was a fool. This was
going nowhere. Then Asa became furtive. He collected his tools and
concealed them, looked around warily. This is it, Shed thought. Asa
took off uphill. Shed puffed after him. His stiff muscles protested
every step. Asa traveled more than a mile through lengthening
shadows. Shed almost lost him. A clinking brought him back to the
track.
    The little man was using flint and steel. He crouched over a
supply of torches wrapped in an oilskin, taken from hiding. He got
a brand burning, hastened into some brush. A moment later he
clambered over some rocks beyond, disappeared. Shed gave it a
minute, then followed. He slid round the boulder where he had seen
Asa last. Beyond lay a crack in the earth just big enough to admit
a man.
    “My god,” Shed whispered. “He’s found a
way into the Catacombs. He’s looting the dead.”
     
    “I came straight back,” Shed gasped. Raven was
amused by his distress. “I knew Asa was foul, but I never
dreamed he’d commit sacrilege.” Raven smiled.
    “Aren’t you disgusted?”
    “No. Why are you? He didn’t steal any
bodies.”
    Shed came within a hair’s breadth of assaulting him. He
was worse than Asa.
    “He making out at it?”
    “Not as well as you. The Custodians take all the burial
gifts except passage urns.” Every corpse in the Catacombs was
accompanied by a small, sealed urn, usually fixed on a chain around
the body’s neck. The Custodians did not touch the few coins
in those. When the Day of Passage came, the Boatmen would demand
payment for passage to Paradise.
    “All those souls stranded,” Shed murmured. He
explained.
    Raven looked baffled. “How can anybody with an ounce of
brains believe that crap? Dead is dead. Be quiet, Shed. Just answer
questions. How many bodies in the Catacombs?”
    “Who knows? They’ve been putting them away
since . . . Hell, for a thousand years. Maybe
there’s millions.”
    “Must have them stacked like cordwood.”
    Shed wondered about that. The Catacombs were vast, but a
thousand years’ worth of cadavers