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do much to stem a real flood. That honor would have to go to his hidden folk friends. Lack of technical knowledge about shadowgates was the main reason we continued to reside in the Land of Unknown Shadows.
    “I understand that, Croaker. Can I get to work here?”
    I was underfoot. Being considered useless is irksome. That condition was familiar to most of us whom Soulcatcher had beguiled and captured and managed to leave buried for fifteen years. Our Company had changed during our slumber. Even Lady and Murgen, who had maintained tenuous connections with the outside world, found themselves marginalized now. Murgen did not mind.
    The culture of the Company has become quite alien. Almost nonorthern flavor remains. Just a few little quirks, in how things are done, and my own proud legacy, an interest in hygiene that is completely foreign to these climes.
    These southerners did not enjoy a proper terror of the forvalaka. They insisted on picturing it as just another spooky nightstalker like Big Ears or Paddlefoot, which they consider essentially harmless. Near as I can tell they appear harmless only because their victims seldom survive to report any contrary facts.
    “A reading from the First Book of Croaker,” I told the assembly. It was after midnight. There had been no uproar for a while. The shadowgate was not leaking the Unforgiven Dead. Tobo was trying to pinpoint the intruder but was having difficulties. It was moving around a lot, scouting, plainly unsure how it should view the fact that it had fallen right in among us. “In those days the Company was in service to the Syndic of Beryl.”
    I told them about another forvalaka, long ago and far away and way more cruel than this one ever could be. I wanted them to worry.

7

An Abode of Ravens:
Night Visitor
    L ady and I sat up with One-Eye. Gota had been laid out in the same room. Candles surrounded her. “I see no obvious change in the woman.”
    “Croaker! Hush!”
    “I hear a difference, though. She hasn’t complained about anything since we got here.”
    Playing deaf, One-Eye took a long drink of his product, closed his eye, nodded off. Lady whispered, “It’s probably best if he naps.”
    “Not very lively bait.”
    “Carrion’s good enough to draw this thing. What it wants to killreally only exists inside itself. One-Eye is just its symbol.” She rubbed her eyes.
    I winced. She looked so old, my love. Grey hair. Wrinkles. Jowls developing. Broadening in the beam. The deterioration had been swift since Sleepy rescued us.
    Lucky for me there was no mirror handy. I really do not like to look at that fat, old, bald guy who goes around claiming to be Croaker.
    The shadows in the room were restless. They made me nervous. From the beginning of our association with Taglios, shadows have been cause for terror. A shadow in motion meant death could have hold of you any moment. Those sad but cruel monsters off the plain had been the lethal instruments by which the Shadowmasters had earned their fame and had enforced their wills. But here, in the Land of Unknown Shadows, the hidden folk who lurked in the dark were shy but not ordinarily unfriendly—if treated with respect. And even those manifestations owning a history of wickedness and malice now worshipped Tobo and harmed no mortal closely associated with the Company. Unless that mortal was dim enough to irk Tobo somehow.
    Tobo lived as much in the world of the hidden folk as he did in ours.
    In the distance the spectral cat Big Ears again mouthed his unique call. Native legend says only the creature’s prospective victims ever hear that chilling cry. A couple of the Black Hounds bayed. Legend suggests you do not want to hear their voices, either. Interviews with locals lead me to believe that before Tobo arrived only ignorant peasants really believed in most such perils of the night and the wild. Educated folk at Khang Phi and Quang Ninh had been stunned by what the boy had summoned from the shadows.
    I glanced