The Many Deaths of the Black Company

In those days the Black Company did not exist. This I know because therewere laws and decrees that told me so. But I did not feel entirelyinsubstantial.The Company standard, its Captain and Lieutenant, its Standardbearerand all the men who had made the Company so terrible, had passed on,having been buried alive at the heart of a vast desert of stone. “Glitteringstone,” they whispered in the streets and alleys of Taglios, and “Gone toKhatovar,” they proclaimed from on high, the mighty making what theyhad been so determined to prevent for so long over into a great triumphonce the Radisha or Protector or somebody decided that people ought tobelieve that the Company had fulfilled its destiny.Anyone old enough to remember the Company knew better. Only fiftypeople had ventured out onto that plain of glittering stone. Half of thosepeople had not been Company. Only two of those fifty had returned to lieabout what had happened. And a third who had come back to retail thetruth [...]had been killed in the Kiaulune wars, far away from the capital. Butthe deceits of Soulcatcher and Willow Swan fooled no one, then or now.People simply pretended to believe them because that was safer.