Bomanz whirled. "Damn you! You never let up, do you?" He spoke softly, in genuine rage, without the shouts and curses and dramatic gestures of his habitual semi-rage.

"All right, Bo. I'll drop it."

"You'd better. You'd damned well better. I won't have you crawling all over him all summer. Won't have it, you hear?"

"I said I'd drop it."

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. I 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.