Blood of Ambrose (26 page)

Morlock watched his face with frank but unobtrusive interest as this internal struggle went on, and finally remarked, “Lathmar, you should be careful. There is a shathe in the room; not all those thoughts may be your own.”

Lathmar's inner turmoil cooled instantly, as if he had been submerged in icy water. “That thing is here? ‘Many’?”

“Yes. I was just going to kill it. I want you to help.”

No!
a voice that was not quite his own said within him. So he said “Yes” firmly, out loud.

Morlock led him over to the far side of his workshop. There the two shields, still bound by the grass twine, were suspended by a black chain over a transparent vat that was filled with a blinding blue-white fluid. It bubbled like porridge over an open flame, though there was no visible fire beneath the vat.

“What is that?” the King asked.

“Aether,” Morlock replied, “the substance out of which lightning is made. Unlike the four terrestrial elements (earth, air, fire, and water) it has a presence on the talic plane.”

“And it is harmful to shathes?”

“Fatal. I plan to immerse the shathe in that crucible of aether. But that will set the grass afire and free the shathe. So beforehand I must fix it in place with spikes of aethrium—an alloy of aether.”

“Oh. What do you want me to do?”

“Hold the shields while I place the spikes.”

The King stepped forward doubtfully. To be near the bubbling crucible of aether was unpleasant in a way he could not quite define. His hair rose on end, as if he were afraid (he supposed he was). He wanted to turn away, to seek shelter. The light seemed to pass straight through him. His teeth were set on edge.

He reached out to hold the shields, and he was aware of the shathe. Suddenly the harsh unyielding light was comforting: he knew it was far more inimical to the shathe than to him.

Morlock was opposite him with two stakes of bright blue metal in his hands.

“You've done this before?” the King said anxiously.

“No.”

“I thought you said—”

“I've killed shathes before, but not with this method.”

“But you're sure this will work?”

“Sure? No.”

“What if it doesn't?” the King demanded, his voice becoming shrill in his own ears.

“The aether will destroy the shields and grass, and there will be an angry shathe loose in the room.”

The King thought about begging off, then shrugged. If the shathe got loose, then he'd run: it would be Morlock's business to do something about it. But if it didn't get loose, he'd never have to worry about its voice chewing its way through his head again.

Morlock watched the King's face until Lathmar made his decision, seemed satisfied with what he saw, and said, “Hold on firmly. I'm putting in the first spike.”

The King obeyed, and watched as Morlock thrust one of the blue spikes straight through the pair of bound shields.

From the broken surfaces of the shields came jets of…something: like glowing steam with faces floating in it.

“What are they?” he asked, his voice quavering.

“The talic remnants of those it has consumed,” Morlock said.

“Their souls?”

“I used that word this afternoon: I should not have. The talic self is not the soul, merely the shell through which the soul acts upon and is linked with the material universe.”

“Then the shathe does not eat souls?”

“I don't know. No one knows. Some believe it; some don't.”

It occurred to the King then, quite suddenly, that if he killed Morlock then the powerful being between the shields, who really meant him no harm, would keep him safe from all his enemies. And if he gave Guntlorta to it, it would make Guntlorta do whatever he asked, including—

“Shut up!” the King hissed.

“It's desperate,” Morlock remarked calmly, seeming to understand. “The second spike, now.”

The second spike produced glowing jets of distorted faces like the first. But the faces seemed more distorted, the glow more faint.

“It's weaker,” Morlock remarked. He reached out and broke the black chain with his thumb and forefinger. The bound shields fell into the vat of aether and instantly went up in flames. Through the screen of their gray ashes the King thought he saw, for a moment, a dark red flame surrounded by a cloud of black smoke. But then this faded, like a fire by daylight, and suddenly was gone. There was only the unchanging, unresting, irritating brightness of the aether. The blue aethrium stakes slowly grew molten, sank into the aether, disappeared.

“It's gone,” the King said with certainty.

“In a way. The thing may still exist in the spiritual realm, but it has no more talic presence—it can no longer affect the tal-world or the world of matter.” Morlock moved away and returned with a blue aethrium slab. It was a relief when he clapped it over the vat and the King was free of its light and the shathe's darkness.

“Whew!” he exclaimed. “A long day, Morlock.”

Morlock paused almost imperceptibly before he answered, “Yes, indeed.”

He didn't seem inclined to continue, so the King prompted him. “You're not going to bed yet?”

“No.”

“You're going out to search for the Protector's Shadow now?”

“Yes.”

“Do you ever say
one damn syllable
more than necessary?” the King cried out.

“Only if it seems necessary,” Morlock replied, smiling wryly.

“Can I come?”

Morlock looked at the King, at the covered vat, back at the King. He shrugged. “Yes. It will be dangerous, though.”

“At least I won't have to try and sleep,” the King said.

Out of his own thoughts, Morlock said, “Yes.”

Morlock led Lathmar down a flight of stairs at the back of his workshop. The way from there became extremely complex, and the King soon lost track of where they were—Lathmar still did not know much of the palace in which he had lived his entire life. But they finally came down in a corridor that ran along the river. Morlock opened a trapdoor in the floor that had been invisible until he touched it. They went down through it, into a sort of crawlspace, down the middle of which ran a channel of dark water.

There was a large squat shape looming in the darkness near them, half submerged in the water, within a ring of folded spindly shapes. Morlock spoke a word to it that the King didn't understand; the side of the squat shape opened up, and light fell out. Lathmar saw that all of the shapes were connected.…It took a few moments to put the pieces together in his mind.

“Is this thing a spider?” he demanded.

“No,” Morlock said, then shrugged. “It does look like one, though. Go in.”

Lathmar was not thrilled by the prospect. But the alternative was “Stay behind,” so he went, crouching, along the crawlspace and into the not-spider.

There was a central dome of polished bronze within; from it dangled some black cables that ended in what seemed to be monocles or eyepieces. On the floor beneath was a board with a set of peculiar switches. Next to the switches stood Wyrth, his head nearly grazing the top of the dome. He glared at Lathmar and Morlock as they entered, crouching as they walked.

“You thought you'd leave me behind!” the dwarf said fiercely as soon as Morlock was within.

“Yes,” Morlock said, and would have continued.

“But you'll bring
him
along,” Wyrth said, gesturing at the King of the Two Cities.

“Yes.” This time it was clear Morlock intended to say no more.

Something in Morlock's tone made Wyrth glance at his eyes. Then the dwarf's gaze fell. He turned away for a moment, then turned back and spoke to Lathmar. “I'm sorry, my friend. That was no way to speak of you.”

“It's nothing, Wyrth—don't think of it,” Lathmar replied, more embarrassed than the dwarf

Morlock said nothing, but his manner was less icy.

“Master Morlock,” the dwarf said.

“Wyrth.”

“You can use an extra pair of eyes and an extra pair of hands, whatever you have in mind. I think I should come along.”

“You'd be better off here. If you want to risk it, the choice is yours.”

“Thanks. I'll—I'll come along then.”

“Then be seated and answer the King's questions. I've got to pilot this rig.” Morlock sat before the board of switches and strapped one of the dangling eyepieces to his left eye. (It looked rather disturbing—as if a headless worm were feeding on his eye.) Then, carefully, he spread out his fingers and put them, knuckle first, onto the board. There was a groove for each of his fingers, and above each set on the board was an upright post with a ring through it.

“What are the switches for?” the King asked.

“Each switch operates one of the legs of the spider. It will send an impulse to move from one of Morlock's fingers through a talic lens, which will magnify the impulse and make it able to move a much greater object. Each talic lens is in talic
stranj
with one of the legs—”

“Talic
stranj?
”

Wyrth grinned, “Sorry. That's the sympathy between a talic presence—like you or me—and matter (like our bodies) which enables the presence to act through the medium of the matter.”

“Oh. What are the talic lenses made of?”

“Well, they are produced by the operator, effecting a change in his own tal through conscious effort.”

“And he must move his own body in the material realm simultaneously, as he maintains these talic lenses?”

“Yes. And keep an eye on the ocellus (or external eye) of the spider, so that we don't bump into anything. You can see why there aren't thousands of these craft running around your city.”

The King winced. He had, in fact, been thinking of a city whose streets were not stained by a single piece of horse shit. “And Morlock can move each one of his fingers independently of the other?” he whispered to Wyrth.

Wyrth looked surprised. “Of course. Can't—Well, I suppose it's the sort of skill one picks up in being a maker.”

“Hm.” Lathmar reflected. “At least he only needs to use eight of them.”

“Eh?”

“Eight legs—eight fingers.”

“Yes, but the operator must also control direction—back and forth, right and left. Morlock controls those with his thumbs.” And Lathmar, looking, saw that Morlock had hooked his thumbs through the rings on the upright posts.

Lathmar was abruptly aware that Morlock had gone into the visionary state. He used the skills he had learned to avoid being drawn into the master seer's vision. The spider jerked and stood on its legs—not wholly upright, or they would have struck the low ceiling outside.

From sloshing sounds, Lathmar guessed they were keeping to the watery channel. He tried not to think what was floating in it with them—and, as a matter of fact, the water didn't smell at all bad, so maybe this channel wasn't a waste conduit.

“We are entering the river level channel,” Morlock said in the strange croaking voice he used when speaking in vision.

“That means a fall of ten feet,” Wyrth said. “Hang on!”

There was nothing to hang on to, so Lathmar braced himself as well as he could on the bare floor. The moment of free fall was disturbing, but the shock of the landing was slight—the spider landed on all its eight feet, not its belly.

“We pass from the channel to the river,” Morlock croaked a while later.

“Put on the other eyepiece,” Wyrth suggested. “There ought to be something to see, now.”

Hesitantly, the King put an eyepiece to his right eye. There was, indeed, something to see. They must have left Ambrose from the north, for it was on their right side, now—its walls dark gleaming shadows, looming high above, the windows of its many towers glittering with glad light. The city, along their left, was more somber, but there were lights there too—a sort of red smear of light along the high eastern bank.

Lathmar tried to adjust his angle of vision by moving his head right and left—then blushed when he realized how foolish this was.

“Is there any way to move the view of the ocellus?” he asked Wyrth.

Now it was the dwarf's turn to be embarrassed. “No. Nor is there more than one. We ought to have put in at least two—one for the front, one for the back. Perhaps we'll remedy that—we've only used the craft four or five times, but it has been useful. In any case, it is a design flaw—we should be able to see what is sneaking up behind us. Not that anything is.”

Wyrth was wrong about this. A man had spotted the spider in the castle waterways and had followed it into the river. Now he was floating in the partially submerged spider's wake, swimming frantically just to keep the craft within view. His breath sobbed, from fear and exertion, but he did not give up the pursuit. He could not: everything that he was depended on this one desperate gamble.

he spider traveled down the river to the sea, and then followed the shoreline eastward. It sloshed along, half submerged, until the sullen glow of the city was left behind. Then it unfolded its long legs and skimmed along the surface of the water for part of an hour. Finally it turned left and walked up on the shore.

The complicated eight-footed motion of the spider on land was remarkably and unpleasantly different than its movement in the waves. The King was wondering whether he was about to vomit when the spider suddenly ceased to walk, and its body descended to the ground. The King took several slow breaths and felt his stomach settle somewhat, and looked up to see Wyrth looking at him ironically.

“It's the opposite for me,” the dwarf said. “I get queasy on the water.”

An intangible tension eased. Lathmar guessed that Morlock had dropped out of the visionary state, and glanced over to see him flexing his fingers.

“Wyrth,” the Crooked Man said in his ordinary voice, “open the hatch. We go on foot from here. You two should arm yourselves from the locker—we may need to fight.”

Wyrth opened the hatch first, to let in some fresh air, and then they served themselves with arms from the locker, a low chest built into the spider's inner wall. Wyrth took an axe and a long dagger; Lathmar chose a short pointed sword of the type he had been practicing with lately. There were several sheathed longswords. The King didn't think any of them were Tyrfing, but Morlock took one of them and a number of aethrium jars slung on a belt. Finally they stepped out onto the ground, the King crouching to get through the hatch, and Morlock bending almost double.

It was still night—well after midnight now, by the position of the stars. The thin steady wind was bitterly cold: it was the month of the Mother and Maiden, well into fall. Chariot, the greater moon, stood somber in the eastern sky, while Trumpeter's bright eye was open in the west.

The spider had brought them to a hillside, the city an umbrous glow on their left hand. The hills before them were stubbled with squarish irregular forms.

“We're among the graves,” Wyrth said, an odd, almost quavering tone in his voice.

“Why have we come here?” the King asked, wondering if his voice sounded much the same.

Morlock shut the hatch behind him and walked northward, belting his sword around him as he walked. Wyrth and the King hurried to catch up.

“Well?” Wyrth asked, exasperation in his tone.

“I am here to find out more about the Companions of Mercy,” Morlock said. “You two are here because you chose to come.”

“Why do we seek among the graves?” the King asked.

“Because that is where the Companions go,” Morlock said. “Be quiet now, or go back.”

Wyrth fell into what seemed a rather glum silence, and they trudged for some considerable time among the grave-strewn hills.

Presently they came to the top of a hill, and Morlock made them stop and hide in the moon shadows behind a grave marker in the shape of three horses, whose heads had fallen off over the years. Peering between their legs, the King saw a caravan of four death carts approaching up a dirt track that led back toward the city. The carts stopped at a mausoleum whose door was awry; the Companions driving them unloaded the dead bodies, stripped them, and stacked them like wood by the carts.

Companions dressed in gray came out of the open mausoleum. In their gray-gloved hands were saws and mallets. Casually, they began to dismember and mutilate the stacks of bodies, sorting the limbs by type. The blood of the corpses was black in the light of the moons, staining the dust of the track. The gray Companions with mallets took the dismembered heads and smashed the dead faces until the features were completely obliterated.

“Why?” whispered the King piercingly.

Morlock only looked at him, glaring with bright ice-gray eyes. Lathmar nodded, silent and ashamed. He heard a small series of intermittent sounds next to him, as if Wyrth were nervously tapping his fingertips rapidly on the stone grave marker. The King was relieved that someone besides himself was nervous, and glanced over in commiseration. Then he wished he hadn't. The dwarf's teeth were actually rattling; his eyes stared wildly at the scene below. He was clearly terrified almost beyond reason. The King somberly turned back to watch, wondering what Wyrth knew that he didn't.

All this while the red Companions were standing aside; they didn't seem to be watching or not watching; they merely waited.

Presently more Companions came out of the open mausoleum. These were dressed all in white: masked, cloaked, booted, and gloved in white. They bore in their hands knives, and masks, and what appeared to be scrolls. Some held between thumb and forefinger small glinting objects that presently proved to be needles.

The white Companions took the chunks of human meat and began to puzzle them into bodies again. The choice of limbs seemed to be more or less arbitrary; the white Companions worked together with reckless speed. Before they put on the first head, they drew the lungs and heart out of the bodies through the neck and tossed them aside in the dirt. Then they put a scroll into the chest cavity, pushing it down through the gaping throat. Finally one sewed a head on (the others were already huddled around a new corpse) and stood back. A spell of great force was effected; the King felt it in his fingers and toes, nearly spoke aloud in surprise. And the corpse stood up. The Companion took a mask and pressed it to the corpse's face, and abruptly they were one. The corpse turned away, stumbling to the pile of discarded clothing, and started to clothe itself. The Companion turned away to assist the others.

The scene was repeated over and over; the pile of discarded hearts beside the road grew into a fair-sized pyramid. The King thought furiously. These things, these pseudohumans, were like the golems Wyrth had told him about—like the Red Knight. They were vivified by a name-scroll. But they were different, too: they were crafted out of human flesh, not any lesser clay. Who was doing this? Why? How long had it been going on? The King began to see that Morlock was right indeed. There was something happening, more terrible and dangerous than the Protector's treason.

Wyrth's hands clutched at the King's arm. Lathmar turned reluctantly to look at his friend. The terrified dwarf pointed down at the scene below. Lathmar nodded slowly. Wyrth hit him on the chest and pointed again.

Lathmar looked down: what could Wyrth mean? Then he realized: the gray-cloaked Companions and some of the patchwork zombies were missing.

He turned in a fright to Morlock, but Morlock was already standing, a sword bare in his hand. Behind and below them on the hill, a line of gray Companions and resurrected dead was advancing.

“The second death!” Wyrth hissed. “The Gate in the West will be closed to us!” He covered his face with his hands and sobbed with terror.

“Get him back to the spider—to Ambrose, if you can,” Morlock said quietly to Lathmar.

“If I can't?”

“Then leave him and get back yourself. Tell Ambrosia what you've seen. Everything depends on it.”

I can't!
the King wanted to say, but did not. Morlock was already halfway down the slope toward their enemies, who were closing a circle to meet him. The line had opened and there was a way for them to pass by—but only if they took it instantly. He jerked Wyrth to his feet and hissed in his ear, “Now we run! The second death, Wyrth! We must escape!”

Wyrth took to his heels, and the King followed; he heard clashing weapons behind him but did not look back. He heard soft feet padding behind him, but he did not look back. He began to be short of breath, but he didn't stop running—not until Wyrth did.

“Where's my master!” the dwarf cried, stopping in his tracks.

“Buying us time to escape,” the King replied. “Come on!”

Wyrth cursed at him in Dwarvish. “God Avenger damn me, I've betrayed him, and so have you!” He drew his axe from his belt and turned to go back.

“Wyrth, no!” the King begged. “Morlock wanted us to get away. He gave everything for it. Don't—”

“I don't give a damn what he wants; I won't buy my life, in this world or the next, with his. You go. You'll find it easy enough when you start running.”

The unfairness of this blinded Lathmar with rage, even wiping out his fear. As if
he
were a coward! As if
he
had crouched under a stone horse tail whimpering “the second death"! He was literally speechless with anger, and it occurred to him suddenly that he was holding a drawn sword that he had been well taught how to use.

That thought, paradoxically, cooled him. It reminded him of all those endless hours of training he had spent with Wyrth, how rarely he grew angry; how he was never, never afraid. But he had shown fear now; Lathmar thought he would welcome death, if it was the only way to escape the stink of his own shame.

Well, death was near enough to them now; there was no need for them to deal it to each other.

There was still a battle going on up the long, dark slope above them. The King could see several body-sized fires on the slope, and the clash of weapons.

Then the Companions and corpse-golems who had followed them down the hill were upon them. Lathmar and Wyrth instinctively went back-to-back. The King struck out at their enemies with all the rage he had felt against Wyrth. But he was cool enough to remember how Morlock had fought against the Protector on the bridge: it was futile to go for mortal blows against the living dead. But they could be crippled. And they were armed only with the tools the Companions had used on the corpses: mallets and knives and saws.

But there were so many of them! They crowded around in a stinking wall: the corpse-golems stinking of blood and worse, with their mismatched limbs, red seams everywhere on their half-naked bodies, the cold pitiless perfection of their mask-faces. The Companions stood back, waiting, watching. They knew the corpse-golems would do what was needed.

So did Lathmar. But he fought on desperately, all the more when Wyrth began to laugh bitterly.

“They want us alive!” he shouted.

That frightened Lathmar more than anything that had happened yet.

Presently Wyrth was struck on the side of the head and fell unconscious to the ground. The King grimly stood over him and hewed at any dead limb that presented itself to him. But he knew it couldn't be long now.

The King felt a pair of cold hands close on his neck from behind. He turned, struggling and failing to strike at one of the dead arms. He saw it fall with a flash from its shoulder. He didn't understand what he was seeing until there was another flash and the corpse-golem's head flew from its shoulders.

There were armed men behind them—at least two of them.

“Golems!” he shouted. “Can't killed! Cut hands!” He wondered if he was making any sense at all.

“Understood!” was the terse reply.

The two fighting men advanced, their swords flashing in the light of the lesser and the greater moons. The ill-made corpses fell in a welter of severed limbs. The dark-cloaked Companions were beginning to move forward.

“Get the dwarf!” he shouted.

“Yes, Your Majesty,” said one of the soldiers. With a burst of surprise, Lathmar realized it was Karn. The other, the one who had spoken first, was flat-faced fearless Erl. But there was no time for questions or answers. Karn picked up the unconscious dwarf and they fled south, Lathmar leading the way toward the sea.

The King remembered what Morlock had said about the Companions being unable to cross running water. He didn't know if the sea counted, but he hoped it would be inimical to them. It may have been, or they may have turned back for other reasons, but by the time they reached Morlock's spider the Companions had given up the chase.

They rested by it, keeping an eye out for their enemies in three directions.

“Can you make this thing work, Your Majesty?” Erl asked.

“No. We'll have to walk back to Ambrose.”

“Too bad—it's been a long day for me.”

The King agreed. Karn said nothing.

“Karn,” said the King quietly, “how did you come to be here?”